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This is Scientific American — 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.
As in many other fields, gender bias pervades the sciences. Men score higher starting salaries, have more mentoring, and have better odds of being hired. Studies show they're alsoperceived asmore competent than women in STEM fields. And new research reveals that men are more likely to receive excellent letters of recommendation, too.
'Say, you know, this is the best student I've ever had.' Kuheli Dutt, a social scientist and diversity officer at Columbia University's Lamont campus. Compare those excellent letters, she says, to a merely good letter: 'The candidate was productive, or intelligent, or a solid scientist or something that's clearly solid praise,' but nothing thatsingles outthe candidate as exceptional orone of a kind.
Dutt and her colleagues studied more than 1,200 letters of recommendation for postdoc positions in geoscience. They were all redacted for gender and other identifying information, so Dutt and her team could assign them a score without knowing the sex of the student. They found that female applicants were only half as likely to snag superlative letters,compared to their male counterparts. That includes letters of rec from all over the world, and written by, yes, men and women. The findings are in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Dutt says they were not able to evaluate the actual scientific qualifications of the applicants using the archival data. But she says the results still suggest women in geoscience are at a potential disadvantage from the very beginning of their careers—starting with those less-than-outstanding letters of rec.
'We're not trying to assign blame or criticize anyone or call anyone consciously sexist or something like that. Rather, the point is to use the results of this study toopen upmeaningful dialogues on implicit gender bias, be it at a departmental level or an institutional level or even a discipline level.' Which may lead to some recommendations for the letter writers themselves.
Thanks for listening for Scientific American — 60-Second Science Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.
参考译文
这里是科学美国人——60秒科学。我是克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔。
和许多其他领域一样，科学界也存在性别歧视。男性起薪更高、能够得到更多的指导，同时被雇佣的几率也更高。研究表明，男性被认为比女性更胜任STEM（科学、技术、工程、数学）领域的工作。而新研究发现，男性还更易获得优质的推荐信。
“比如，这是我带过的最优秀的学生。”哥伦比亚大学拉蒙特校区社会学家、多元融合战略师Kuheli Dutt说优秀的推荐信一般会这样写。而一封“还不错”的推荐信则会写：“该申请人效率高、富有智慧，是个可靠的科学家等这样平实的称赞”，而这些根本不能使她从众多申请人中脱颖而出。
Dutt和她的同事研究了地球科学专业1200多封博士学位的推荐信。这些推荐信隐去了性别和其他个人信息，这样Dutt和她的团队可以在不知道学生性别的情况下为推荐信评测分数。他们发现，相比男性，女性申请者只有一半的可能性拿到绝佳的推荐信。这些推荐信来自世界各地，当然，既有男性写的，也有女性写的。该结果发表在《自然地球科学》期刊上。
Dutt表示，他们不能仅通过档案数据就来评定申请人的实际科研资质。然而调查结果还是表明：在地球科学领域，女性申请者在职业生涯初期就处于潜在劣势，因为她们受到了这些较普通推荐信的影响。
“我们并不是批评或指责任何人，也不是称他们有性别歧视。而是我们希望利用这项研究结果对隐含的性别偏见展开有意义的对话，在部门级别或机构层面，甚至是学科水平进行探讨。”这也许会为推荐人提供一些建议。
谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学。我是克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔。
重点讲解：
1. perceive as 看作；视为；认为；
例句：If students perceive themselves as receiving care from teachers and peers, it will also discourage bullying behaviours.
当学生意识到他们受老师和朋辈所关怀，同样可以减少欺凌的行为。
2. single out 单独挑出；特别选出；
例句：The team coach singled out two players for special praise.
教练挑出两名队员给予特别表扬。
3. one of a kind 独一无二的；独特的；
例句：She's a very unusual woman, one of a kind.
她是个非常与众不同的女人，是独一无二的。
4. compared to 与…相比；和…比起来；
例句：Compared to what others have been through, I'm fortunate.
跟别人的遭遇相比，我已经算是幸运的。
5. open up 打开；开启；
例句：They are preparing to open up a national debate.
他们正准备展开一场全国性的争论。
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