Tag Archives: science

Gender differences in how scientists present the importance of their research: observational study

Marc J. Lerchenmueller, Olav Sorenson, and Anupam B. Jena

OBJECTIVES

Women remain underrepresented on faculties of medicine and the life sciences more broadly. Whether gender differences in self presentation of clinical research exist and may contribute to this gender gap has been challenging to explore empirically. The objective of this study was to analyze whether men and women differ in how positively they frame their research findings and to analyze whether the positive framing of research is associated with higher downstream citations.

DESIGN

Retrospective observational study.

DATA SOURCES

Titles and abstracts from 101 720 clinical research articles and approximately 6.2 million general life science articles indexed in PubMed and published between 2002 and 2017.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

Analysis of article titles and abstracts to determine whether men and women differ in how positively they present their research through use of terms such as “novel” or “excellent.” For a set of 25 positive terms, we estimated the relative probability of positive framing as a function of the gender composition of the first and last authors, adjusting for scientific journal, year of publication, journal impact, and scientific field.

RESULTS

Articles in which both the first and last author were women used at least one of the 25 positive terms in 10.9% of titles or abstracts versus 12.2% for articles involving a male first or last author, corresponding to
a 12.3% relative difference (95% CI 5.7% to 18.9%). Gender differences in positive presentation were greatest in high impact clinical journals (impact
factor >10), in which women were 21.4% less likely to present research positively. Across all clinical journals, positive presentation was associated with 9.4% (6.6% to 12.2%) higher subsequent citations, and in high impact clinical journals 13.0% (9.5% to 16.5%) higher citations. Results were similar when broadened to general life science articles published in journals indexed by PubMed, suggesting that gender differences in positive word use generalize to broader samples.

CONCLUSIONS

Clinical articles involving a male first or last author were more likely to present research findings positively in titles and abstracts compared with articles in which both the first and last author were women, particularly in the highest impact journals. Positive presentation of research findings was associated with higher downstream citations.

British Medical Journal, 367(2019):I6573 (OPEN ACCESS)

Summarized in Harvard Business Review

Summarized in the New York Times

The gender gap in early career transitions in the life sciences

Marc Lerchenmueller and Olav Sorenson

We examined the extent to which and why early career transitions have led to women being underrepresented among faculty in the life sciences. We followed the careers of 6,336 scientists from the post-doctoral fellowship stage to becoming a principal investigator (PI) – a critical transition in the academic life sciences. Using a unique dataset that connects individuals’ National Institutes of Health funding histories to their publication records, we found that a large portion of the overall gender gap in the life sciences emerges from this transition. Women transition to being a PI at a 20% lower rate than men. Differences in “productivity” (publication records) can explain about 60% of this lower rate. The remaining differential in the rates appears to stem from gender differences in the returns to similar publication records, with women systematically receiving less credit for highly-cited research.

Research Policy, 47 (2018): 1007-1017 (OPEN ACCESS)

Innovation policy in a networked world

Olav Sorenson

Social relationships channel information, influence, and access to scarce resources. As a consequence, social networks—-the patterns of these relationships across the members of a community—-influence who comes up with important innovations, whether and how rapidly those innovations get adopted, and who has the ability to commercialize them. They therefore also affect the overall rate at which innovation occurs in the economy. This paper provides an introduction to and review of the research on social networks most relevant to innovation, with a particular focus on the earliest stages of the innovation process. It then discusses the likely consequences of a variety of policy interventions that could either reduce the importance of social relationships to innovation or alter the patterns of relationships in ways that might promote innovation.

Innovation Policy and the Economy, 18 (2018): 53-77

NBER Working Paper Preprint

Long-term analysis of sex differences in prestigious authorships in cardiovascular research supported by the National Institutes of Health

Carolin Lerchenmüller, Marc Lerchenmueller, and Olav Sorenson

This study examines gender differences in the relative rates of men versus of women being listed in the prestigious first and last author positions on papers, changes in those rates over time, and differences in those rates across groups of articles. The probability of a woman being the first author on an article has risen over time to the point where she has better odds than a man of earning that position. But this advantage only exists for articles in less prominent journals. Women still have lower odds of receiving first authorships in the most prestigious journals. Progress in the rates at which women appear in the last author position, moreover, appears to have stalled, with women being named to these positions at nearly half the rate of men.

Circulation,137 (2018): 880-882 (OPEN ACCESS)

Venture capital as a catalyst to commercialization

Sampsa Samila and Olav Sorenson

We find that public research funding and venture capital have a complementary relationship in fostering innovation and the creation of new firms. Based on a panel of metropolitan areas in the United States from 1993 to 2002, we find that the positive relationships between government research grants and the rates of patenting and firm formation in a region become more pronounced as the supply of venture capital in that region increases. Our results remain robust to estimation with an instrumental variable to address potential endogeneity in the provision of venture capital. Consistent with perspectives that emphasize the importance of an innovation ecosystem, our results therefore point to a strong interaction between private financial intermediation and public research funding in promoting entrepreneurship and growth.

Research Policy, 39 (2010): 1348-1360

Science, social networks and spillovers

Olav Sorenson and Jasjit Singh

Although prior empirical research has established an association between science and the widespread diffusion of knowledge, the exact mechanism(s) through which science catalyses information flow remains somewhat ambiguous. This paper investigates whether the knowledge diffusion associated with science-based innovation stems from the norm of openness and incentives for publication, or whether scientists maintain more extensive and dispersed social networks that facilitate the dissemination of tacit knowledge. Our analysis supports the first mechanism: we track the movement of knowledge with patent citations, and find that science-based innovations diffuse more rapidly and widely, even after controlling for the underlying social networks of researchers as measured using information on prior collaborations. We also find that publication and social networks act as substitutes in the diffusion of knowledge.

Industry and Innovation, 14 (2007): 219-238

Science and the diffusion of knowledge

Olav Sorenson and Lee Fleming

Scientists, social scientists and politicians frequently credit basic science with stimulating technological innovation, and with it economic growth. Despite a substantial body of research investigating this general relationship, relatively little empirical attention has been given to understanding the mechanisms that might generate this linkage. This paper considers whether more rapid diffusion of knowledge, brought about by the norm of publication, might account for part of this effect. We identify the importance of publication by comparing the patterns of citations from future patents to three groups of focal patents: (i) those that reference scientific (peer-reviewed) publications, (ii) those that reference commercial (non-scientific) publications; and (iii) those that reference neither. Our analyses strongly implicate publication as an important mechanism for accelerating the rate of technological innovation: Patents that reference published material, whether peer-reviewed or not, receive more citations, primarily because their influence diffuses faster in time and space.

Research Policy, 33 (2004): 1615-1634

Science as a map in technological search

Lee Fleming and Olav Sorenson

A large body of work argues that scientific research increases the rate of technological advance, and with it economic growth. The precise mechanism through which science accelerates the rate of invention, however, remains an open question. Conceptualizing invention as a combinatorial search process, this paper argues that science alters inventors’ search processes, by leading them more directly to useful combinations, eliminating fruitless paths of research, and motivating them to continue even in the face of negative feedback. These mechanisms prove most useful when inventors attempt to combine highly coupled components; therefore, the value of scientific research to invention varies systematically across applications. Empirical analyses of patent data support this thesis.

Strategic Management Journal, 25 (2004): 909-928