The general consensus among hundreds of colleagues who have read and commented on this paper in large group email threads and on Twitter is that it is deeply methodologically flawed, and with the potential to inflict serious harm on the global scientific community....
It is your ethical duty to retract the paper.
Twitter attempts to have paper on mentorship retracted
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Paper's weak, but no weaker than countless comparable studies which no one complains about. I wonder what the difference is?
The association between early career informal mentorship in academic collaborations and junior author performance
Bedoor AlShebli, Kinga Makovi & Talal Rahwan
Nature Communications volume 11, Article number: 5855 (2020)Abstract
We study mentorship in scientific collaborations, where a junior scientist is supported by potentially multiple senior collaborators, without them necessarily having formal supervisory roles. We identify 3 million mentor–protégé pairs and survey a random sample, verifying that their relationship involved some form of mentorship. We find that mentorship quality predicts the scientific impact of the papers written by protégés post mentorship without their mentors. We also find that increasing the proportion of female mentors is associated not only with a reduction in post-mentorship impact of female protégés, but also a reduction in the gain of female mentors. While current diversity policies encourage same-gender mentorships to retain women in academia, our findings raise the possibility that opposite-gender mentorship may actually increase the impact of women who pursue a scientific career. These findings add a new perspective to the policy debate on how to best elevate the status of women in science. -
There are a whole host of other papers (queen bee effect) suggesting that female mentor- female mentee relationships struggle compared to other mentor ship dyads. This paper just provides some external evidence for the effect. It’s also a convenient drive by target because of the headline. But the paper is by no means “weak.” Nature comms is one of the legit Nature journals.
Paper's weak, but no weaker than countless comparable studies which no one complains about. I wonder what the difference is?
The association between early career informal mentorship in academic collaborations and junior author performance
Bedoor AlShebli, Kinga Makovi & Talal Rahwan
Nature Communications volume 11, Article number: 5855 (2020)
Abstract
We study mentorship in scientific collaborations, where a junior scientist is supported by potentially multiple senior collaborators, without them necessarily having formal supervisory roles. We identify 3 million mentor–protégé pairs and survey a random sample, verifying that their relationship involved some form of mentorship. We find that mentorship quality predicts the scientific impact of the papers written by protégés post mentorship without their mentors. We also find that increasing the proportion of female mentors is associated not only with a reduction in post-mentorship impact of female protégés, but also a reduction in the gain of female mentors. While current diversity policies encourage same-gender mentorships to retain women in academia, our findings raise the possibility that opposite-gender mentorship may actually increase the impact of women who pursue a scientific career. These findings add a new perspective to the policy debate on how to best elevate the status of women in science. -
The paper is weak because they draw causal interpretations with nothing resembling exogenous variation. Being published in a Nature journal is no guarantee against dodgy statistics.
But the much more interesting issue here is the wildly and proudly illogical and anti-scientific response on social media.
Paper: Across three million observations, we observe A and B are negatively correlated.
Hundreds of Twittering scientists: That correlation is false! I have an anecdote in which A and B both high!
This tweet has slightly under 3k likes as I write this:
Raise your hand if you are a female scientist who had a female mentor who was pivotal to you success. This paper is way off base!
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Agreed. The “flaw” of the paper here is really the result. If it pointed towards a PC interpretation, these people would not only applaud it but also cancel anyone that questions the results validity
The paper is weak because they draw causal interpretations with nothing resembling exogenous variation. Being published in a Nature journal is no guarantee against dodgy statistics.
But the much more interesting issue here is the wildly and proudly illogical and anti-scientific response on social media.
Paper: Across three million observations, we observe A and B are negatively correlated.
Hundreds of Twittering scientists: That correlation is false! I have an anecdote in which A and B both high!
This tweet has slightly under 3k likes as I write this:Raise your hand if you are a female scientist who had a female mentor who was pivotal to you success. This paper is way off base!
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Or that there is a higher share or men in the top jobs than at a lower level. So "women" is highly correlated with "not in position of power"
Among many other problems, I mean let's be serious this paper would have been desk reject in any decent econ journal
That does not make Twitter based retraction requests more acceptable
So if this isn't causal, I guess this means that women who choose female mentors are worse in quality that women who choose male mentors.
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But the much more interesting issue here is the wildly and proudly illogical and anti-scientific response on social media.
Does there exist such thing as logical and scientific responses on social media? This is why academic journals exist and why publications count for tenure and opeds do (should) not.
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That reasoning supports the "systemic discrimination" story, then, right? It's just harder for women to get into these positions of power.
Anyway, agree that there is confusion over the conditions under which a retraction is warranted. Fraud and data errors that weren't already known at the time of the review AND that overturn the original results at the time of the review are really the main reasons for a retraction.
It's not even "I disagree with your standards."
Or that there is a higher share or men in the top jobs than at a lower level. So "women" is highly correlated with "not in position of power"
Among many other problems, I mean let's be serious this paper would have been desk reject in any decent econ journal
That does not make Twitter based retraction requests more acceptableSo if this isn't causal, I guess this means that women who choose female mentors are worse in quality that women who choose male mentors.
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FFS just look at the responses:
It's amusing to see people dismissing the anecdotal experience of female scientists against a paper published about female scientists... Face with rolling eyes
Clearly as scientists we should demand data, but the experiences of female scientists in this instance ARE THE RELEVANT DATA! Sit down.
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This sort of stuff is why the notion of there being a "scientific consensus" on these sorts of topics is a joke. Has there been an article clearly subverting a woke narrative published in Nature/Science in the past few years that hasn't triggered a retraction petition?
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Anecdotally, what this paper says rings 100% true.
The general consensus among hundreds of colleagues who have read and commented on this paper in large group email threads and on Twitter is that it is deeply methodologically flawed, and with the potential to inflict serious harm on the global scientific community....
It is your ethical duty to retract the paper. -
But the much more interesting issue here is the wildly and proudly illogical and anti-scientific response on social media.
Exactly. Most of the posts don't even bother to criticize the methodology. They criticize the results.
If someone made the most perfect study ever done in the social sciences with the same result. They would still criticize it the same way.
If God came to Earth and said the same results as this paper (notice that we are dealing with omniscience)... they would still criticize God. And would probably try to cancel him for -ist "opinions" (since God has omniscience, God doesn't have opinions).