Analysis of ISCB honorees and keynotes reveals disparities
Trang Le, Daniel Himmelstein,
Ariel Hippen Anderson, Matthew Gazzara, Casey Greene*
University of Pennsylvania
Virtual ISMB 2020
Recorded by 2020-06-30
Peer recognition is central to how scientists progress in their careers.
Do the composition of ISCB honorees reflect the composition of the field?
~ 34,000 corresponding authors
412 society honorees
Gender analysis
first name → genderize.io → probability of male/female
{first_name} {probability_male}
david 0.99
sarah 0.02
avery 0.67No significant difference in gender proportion between honorees and authors.
Name origin analysis
English Wikipedia 2019 category of Living People
LSTM 3-grams
probability of name originating from each of 10 NamePrism country groups
LSTM model is well-calibrated and shows strong performance across origin categories.
East Asian names are NOT often mistaken as Greek names.
The classifier is more prone to mistaking South Asian names as Celtic/English.
Affiliation analysis
pubmedpy + speaker bio.
{wru} to estimate race and ethnicity of
US-affiliated scientists
enrichment analysis to assess affiliation over/under-representation
Overrepresentation of US-affiliated honorees
US-affiliated scientists
US-affiliated scientists
US-affiliated scientists
US-affiliated scientists
US-affiliated scientists
US-affiliated scientists
US-affiliated scientists
Key findings
~ 30,000 papers, 412 honorees, 700,000 name-nationality pairs
- % female honorees has kept pace with increasing levels of female authorship, but neither has yet to reach gender parity.
- Celtic/English names are overrepresented
- East Asian names are underrepresented
- the U.S. received 85 more honorees than expected
- ∃ excess of white honorees
- ∃ depletion of Asian honorees
Where are we heading?
2020
- 12 ISCB Fellows
- 5 ISMB keynote speakers
prob(having an East Asian name) ~ 33%
Societies can design policies to honor scientists in ways that counter these biases.
Acknowledgements
Casey Greene @greenescientist
Daniel Himmelstein @dhimmel
Ariel Hippen Anderson @AHippenAnderson
Matthew Gazzara @MR_Gazzara
Team
Feedback
Funding
Data & Resources
@trang1618
