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In decision certain to draw fire, journal will publish heavily criticized paper on gender differences in physics

Physicist Alessandro Strumia’s views have drawn widespread condemnation

The primary takeaway from his study, Strumia tells ScienceInsider, is that men and women have equal opportunities in fundamental physics, and women don't necessarily face a more hostile work environment. "This is what comes out from the data," he says. "I believe [this] because I see this in the data."

Strumia's paper is likely, once again, to attract fierce pushback. Ludo Waltman, the editor-in-chief of QSS and an information scientist at Leiden University in the Netherlands, wrote in an email that he doesn't yet know how many critiques the journal will publish but said they will "discuss possible weaknesses in the paper or alternative interpretations." His decision to publish Strumia's paper "doesn't necessarily mean that [it] has no weaknesses," Waltman noted. "As journal editor, I often decide to publish papers that have weaknesses or that contain analyses or statements that a reviewer doesn't like (or that I don't like myself)."

One member of the editorial board of QSS, which is published by MIT Press and the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (ISSI), gives Strumia's paper poor reviews. The study is "methodologically flawed" and "fails to meet the standards of the bibliometric community," says Cassidy Sugimoto, an information scientist at Indiana University in Bloomington, who has published on gender disparities in science and was asked by ScienceInsider to review Strumia's paper. The study contains "several unsubstantiated claims," she says, and doesn't properly cite or discuss papers that come to conflicting conclusions. "Overall," Sugimoto says, "the manuscript does not provide a convincing understanding of the literature or the methods, lessening the credibility of the results."

In an email, Sugimoto wrote that "To maintain the editorial integrity of our journal, the Board of ISSI does not interfere with individual decisions on manuscripts: the Editor-in-Chief assumes full responsibility for editorial decisions."

Rachel Oliver, a materials scientist at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom who has previously raised concerns about Strumia's work, says, "Despite the very significant amount of effort he has clearly put into this work," Strumia "certainly hasn't attempted any analysis of the relevant systemic problems" that might influence gender differences in physics, such as implicit bias or outright harassment.


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