Recently an article was published in the open-access journal Nature Communications. This article, entitled The association between early career informal mentorship in academic collaborations and junior author performance suggests that less experienced female scientists benefit more from mentorship by more experienced male scientists than more experienced female scientists.
Of course, feminists are demanding that the article be retracted, with some of them specifically citing hurt feelings in a thread on Twitter. This is another example of a phenomenon I have often noted. Feminists will go nuts any time anyone suggests that women benefit from interacting with men.
Nature Communications is taking feminist complaints seriously of course. They couldn’t just ignore a bunch of screaming harpies now, could they?
“Toxic misogyny in Academia”, oh lordy. Exactly how pro-woman would she like academia to get? Don’t answer that, I already know.
Strawman anyone?
Hurtful I tell you!
Offensive!
Damage!
This gentleman even claims the results are unethical. I’d love to see his working.
Feelz before realz!
An academic system that is biased against women? She must mean how tertiary enrolment rates for men have been sliding for decades, or how women have a 2:1 hiring advantage in their favour in STEM.
Two of the three authors are women. Must be more of that internalised misogyny we keep hearing so much about.
At least there are a few people still willing to express the voice of reason.
I can’t speak to the strength of the paper, but the correct way to address it is to challenge it in the marketplace of ideas, as I suggested to Nature Communications.
Censorship in academia continues apace. They can’t or won’t argue with the contents of the article, they merely wish to see it banished.
In case the original article is taken down by Nature Communications, an archived copy can be found here.
