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 The study team analyzed the language used in more than 6 million
papers in peer-reviewed medical and scientific journals to see how
often the findings were described with any of 25 words that have
positive connotations, such as "excellent," "unique," "promising"
and "remarkable."
Papers with male lead authors were up to 21% more likely than those
with female lead authors to use positive framing - language that
casts the findings as highly significant - in titles and abstracts,
the analysis found.
And papers that used positive framing had up to 13% more citations
by other scientists than papers without this language.
"Since citations are a key determinant in hiring and promotion
decisions, gender differences in language use may have tangible
career implications," said lead study author Marc Lerchenmueller of
the University of Mannheim in Germany.
"Women's work may receive less attention and recognition as a result
of them using more timid language," Lerchenmueller said by email.
"Framing may influence what research gets noticed and what science
may ultimately inform patient care."
Women in academic medicine and life sciences tend to receive fewer
promotions, earn lower salaries, and receive fewer research grants
than their male counterparts, the study team notes in The BMJ.
While the analysis wasn't designed to prove whether or how the
wording of research papers might impact scientists' career
trajectories over time, it's possible that using more muted language
holds women back, the study team notes.
To account for changes in language over time and different
approaches at different journals, researchers compared papers in the
same publication, and from the same year with one another, and the
results held up.
They also compared papers with similar approaches to investigating
similar topics - such as clinical trials for cancer treatments - to
account for differences in describing different types of research.
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One limitation of the study is that Lerchenmueller's team was unable
to objectively determine the scientific merits of the studies in
their analysis, making it unclear whether men produced more novel
work than women or if men set a lower bar for declaring their work
unique.
Social norms may play a role, said Rosemary Morgan, of the Johns
Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.
"Male researchers are more likely to describe their work as
ground-breaking or novel compared to female research not because men
are more confident than women, but because women are penalized when
they demonstrate typical 'masculine' traits like assertiveness,"
Morgan, who wasn't involved in the study, said by email.
"Women are often expected to show more feminine traits like empathy
and being modest, or risk being seen as less likeable and not a team
player," Morgan added. "This leads to women promoting themselves and
their work less than men, which can negatively affect their career
progression."
Journals may unintentionally perpetuate existing gender bias if they
don't put procedures in place to make the wording of published
papers gender neutral, Morgan said. To avoid this, journals could
create strict criteria research must meet for scientists to describe
the work as "first" or "novel" or use other common superlatives.
"This could have the effect of ensuring more women describe their
research that way, or limiting the number of men who do," Morgan
said.
SOURCE: https://bit.ly/2PKqkhm The BMJ, online December 16, 2019.
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