Female researchers are less likely than men to frame their work with positive words, study finds
Women were 20% less likely than men to use positive words like "novel" or "excellent" in journal abstracts summarizing their research.
Are men more impressed with their own scientific research than women? Or are women warned off “overstating” their work?
A new analysis suggests it might be a little of both.
Women were 12.3% less likely than men to frame their work with positive words like “novel” or “excellent” in abstracts, according to a new study of 15 years of clinical research publications. In the case of only top-tier journals — there are numbered rankings for this in the arcane world of scientific publishing — the gap widened to 20.4%.
