Pity me. I just had a paper rejected because, as one reviewer said, “Although your cure for cancer seems genuine, and would likely help people suffering from that dread disease, you did not cite even one black transsexual migrant with an orientation toward minors. And you gave yourself no help at all by being a white man. Therefore I’m recommending rejecting the paper.”
I have to accept this judgement, of course, because The Science is nothing without the voice of genuine perverts, lunatics, and other assorted Official Victims receiving credit. Highlighting their lived experiences must take precedence over all other matters.
So says Nature, the journal of journals, in “Citation diversity statements” (I have corrected their persistent and surprising misspelling of DIE).
Since taking office in January of this year, the Trump administration has taken actions to limit — if not outright dismantle — diversity, equity and inclusion (DIE) efforts in federally funded science and academia in the US. Grants for research that explicitly study DIE issues (such as inequality) or that include a DIE component (such as an explicit aim to test diverse cohorts) have been paused or cancelled1, and universities have been threatened with losing federal funding if they ‘promote DIE’2.
My second sad duty is to report that Trump’s efforts have been largely in vain. It’s true outright demands to DIE have been removed in some grant applications, but the desire to DIE, the need to DIE, and the enforcing of DIE in universities has remained, even strengthened, though renamed by the ladies (biological and spiritual) who run The Science. Hence this new insistence Victims get cited.
In The Science, as elsewhere in the culture, everybody both deserves and must have a trophy.
[C]itations can influence a researcher’s career through speaking invitations, grants, awards and promotions. Thus, representation in reference lists has important consequences for representation in science: if citations are systematically biased against, for example, female authors4, then female authors will have CVs or grant applications that are less competitive than those of their male counterparts. Moreover, a systematic citation bias against women means that the field is not properly benefiting from their scientific contributions.
This is a clear indication that women are not at least a two-to-one majority (defined as “Equity”) in a few remaining departments (like Math), and a signal that that must change.
That Nature editorial pointed as inspiration to the peer-reviewed paper “The extent and drivers of gender imbalance in neuroscience reference lists” by, inter alia, Jordan D. Dworkin, who I couldn’t help but wonder if he was related to the she-beast Andrea Dworkin. But as it seems impossible she could have mated without her man first draining the Jamesons’s distillery dry, and since we have not heard reports of this, his hername (no Enlightened person uses surname today) must a coincidence. The paper was in Nature NeuroTheScience.
The paper reports on the alarming rise of women-authored and -led papers in gray-matter journals. “Across these five journals, the overall proportion of articles that had women as first or last author increased from 36% in 1995 to 50% in 2018”. That was seven years ago. Could be as much as 100% by now.
Yet if even one white man remains on top (or, curiously, at bottom) in an author list, a great injustice would still be with us. How do we prevent this tragedy? By citing the unable. It is your duty, Dworkin and pals argue, to seek out Victims and put their names in your papers.
Actually, I’m not sure what their point is. Their paper is littered, positively festooned, with wee Ps, confidence intervals, and strange statistical terms. Counting all the women and Victims in papers and citations must have made them go goofy. Here’s an example (which you don’t have to read):
My eyes didn’t glaze over trying to read that. They threatened to jump out of my skull. (Ban P-values.)
But then came the easy-to-understand picture, which I promise came right out of the paper. Something about picking papers by “random-draws models”. Papers go into coffee cups and pretty ladies in dresses reach in an grab out slips. Or something. It is not clear, at all, why.
I wonder if the ladies made colorful cardboard slips with paper names on them just like this in their takeout clear plastic organic salad bowls, put gold stars and glitter on Victim ones, and made an afternoon of playing with “random draws.” And not drawn by “pretty ladies” neither. They are forbidden in academia. Probably they used ugly grad students.
Anyway, men are bad, White men especially so, responsible for “many imbalances”. Like men being better at math and then writing papers proving it. Shockingly rude of them. Not to say misogynistic (shouldn’t that be misterogynistic?).
“Addressing the identified imbalances will require researchers, particularly men, to make use of available resources and engage in more thoughtful citation practices.”
Consider this article one man addressing it.
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Briggs: Is there a statistical study showing the Victims are happy or unhappy with their Special Elevated Status? It would seem there should be happy, at least silently, as too much exuberance might raise eyebrows among the enlightened.
Just wondering 1) how they can say women are underrepresented as authors when they can’t even define what a “woman” is; and 2) if they count female-idenifying transpersons as women for the purposes of their study? Then again, maybe the distinction is made in their various reference codes: MM, WM, MW, WW. My best guess is, Man identifying as Man, Woman identifying as Man, Man identifying as Woman and (god forbid) a Woman identifying as a Woman. I have no idea what WUW even means.
This represents yet another example of what happens when people can self-identify as “high IQ”.
As long as women can vote the USA is doomed.
Most of the time papers only have the first initial in the citation author list – how the heck am I supposed to know if the author is male or female? When I’m searching Google Scholar for references I’m using keywords, and going by relevance to the topic at hand, not even paying attention to the authors. In my field most papers coming up in a search are going to have Chinese authors anyways. Plus it’s likely going to just be initials on the author list – how do I know what sex the initials are? I don’t care. Does the paper appear to support whatever statement I am making in my paper? Yes? In it goes.
Sometimes I wish every male CEO, and publishing scientist and engineer would just check the female box and declare they are women and be done with it. Sadly, that still wouldn’t shut up these idiot DIE feminazis (who until then would have been staunch trans supporters). These people torque me off to no end, because now, as an XX in a STEM field I have to question whether I am a post turtle, or did I actually earn it?
When I was writing papers and technical reports, I cited the papers from which I got the information I needed. In most cases, I had no idea what the race of the author was, and it certainly never occurred to me not to use a source because it was written by a woman. I can’t believe anyone really discriminates like that. When it comes to citations, women and people of color don’t have any grievance that needs to be remedied. Picking sources to use and cite based on the race and sex of the author is idiotic and will degrade the quality of research.
“Consider this article one man addressing it.”
And doing such a fine job that none of your adversaries dare address it in turn.
Cheers from Florida, land of the ugly beasts known as womanatees. Meritocracy is now Ancient Herstory. Sheesh.