Gender Imbalance in Science

There is a gender imbalance in science. This is most obvious when looking at math, physics or engineering programs. It's easy to look around biomedical labs, see the number of women, and assume this isn't a problem for the biological sciences. And indeed, in the biological sciences, women make up 62% of bachelor's recipients and 56% of graduate students¹. Beyond that, the numbers drop off for a number of reasons. Again, in the biological sciences, only 41% of postdoctoral fellows, 33% of tenure-track and 22% of tenured scientists are women. (Nevermind the fact that their salaries also tend to be lower)

Those numbers are pretty shameful. Some might argue that it doesn't matter, as long as the science being done is good (though I'm really not sure who they might be). The problem is, it isn't. Even the research being done is gender biased, as highlighted by a series of recent editorials in Nature. The first points out that there's a gender bias in clinical trials: except for a few key areas (eg. breast, cervical or ovarian cancers) women are underrepresented

Generally, women remain underrepresented in biomedical research. Studies published in 2000 and in 2008 concluded that women were still not included in mixed-sex cardiovascular trials in numbers that reflect the disease prevalence among the general population. A survey of studies published in 2004 in nine influential medical journals found that only 37% of participants were women (24% when restricted to drug trials), and only 13% of studies analysed data by sex.

It's no secret that women and men have different physiologies, and can be differently affected by diseases and their treatments. So why should sex differences not be considered when designing a clinical trial? You can't treat differently if you don't know the differences, and even where gender is known to affect outcomes, there's still no difference in treatment

A 2005 study of 300 new drug applications between 1995 and 2000 found that even those drugs that showed substantial differences in how they were absorbed, metabolized and excreted by men and women had no sex-specific dosage recommendations on their labels. This may be part of the reason why women are 1.5 times more likely to develop an adverse reaction to prescription drugs than men.

And if you're a pregnant woman, it gets even worse. You're forced to either forego treatment or potentially settle for drugs of unknown effectiveness or safety (for you or the fetus), since pregnant women are usually excluded from trials and new drugs are often not approved for them. This despite the obvious fact, that the second article points out, that "pregnant women get sick, and sick women get pregnant." Obviously diving right into clinical trials with pregnant women is a bit risky, in no small part for the fetus (though a controlled clinical trial is probably still safer than rolling the dice with off-label use), but there are ways this can be approached.

There is an obvious alternative: small, well-designed trials for pregnant women, starting with phase I safety trials that would begin at the same time as phase III efficacy trials in the general population. With this staggered approach, pregnant women and fetuses would not be exposed to any compounds that failed in phase I and II trials.

This strategy is simple, and makes sense: it allows pregnant women the same standard of evidence-based care afforded to everybody else (even better, if you consider the lack of sex consideration described above), accounting for their own particular changes while mitigating risk.

Most surprising, to me at least, is the fact that gender bias even extends to animal models. In some ways, it makes sense to keep models simple and avoid potential complications from hormone cycles. Depsite the fact that male mice tend to fight when caged together and single housing takes both space and money, a survey of 2000 studies done in 2009 found a male bias in animals used.

We found a male bias in 8 out of 10 biological disciplines, most pronounced in neuroscience (5.5 males to 1 female), pharmacology (5 males to 1 female) and physiology (3.7 males to 1 female).

Though this might be more convenient or have a practical rationale, it doesn't necessarily result in the best model. So we have biased models feeding into imbalanced clinical trials, with women getting the short end at each step. And the end result:

However justifiable these imbalances may be on a case-by-case basis, their cumulative effect is pernicious: medicine as it is currently applied to women is less evidence-based than that being applied to men.

Which is just sad.

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¹All numbers based on US statistics from the NSF, 2006.

What is it like to be a new PI?

I found this blog post from a recent Harvard Prof who discusses the realities of becoming a PI. A few highlights:

-"I guess that I spent about 40% of my time chasing after funding"
-"These days, funding rates are abysmal: less than 10% for some NSF programs, and the decision on a proposal is often arbitrary. "
-"the biggest predictor of success as a junior faculty member is how much of your life you are willing to sacrifice"
-"Most of my days are spent in an endless string of meetings"

Things may seem bleak but there is a silver lining:
"The main reason to be an academic is not to crank out papers or to raise a ton of money but to train the next generation. I love working with students and this is absolutely the best part of my job."

(H/T Ben Ferguson)

GuideToOnlineSchools.com

You can sign up to get your PhD online here. Choose your program wisely however. You don't want to waste all that time surfing the web for nothing:

"While those with Ph.D.'s often go into careers as university professors, many also work outside academia in scientific research, publishing, or other arenas. A Ph.D., otherwise known as a doctorate, can be an excellent choice for those who are passionate about contributing to a specific field; those with this degree typically earn several hundred thousand dollars more over their career than those with a master's degree. That said, competition for jobs as professors can be cutthroat. Students contemplating a Ph.D. program should research their options and career prospects carefully."

Chocolate-Funded Researchers Fudging the Data?

Unfortunately, corporations seem to have perfected the art of corrupting academic research to help up their street cred and push their products. It's fairly simple to do if you have a decent sized budget and can be accomplished in three easy steps:

1. Throw lots of soft money into funding research chairs, grants, conferences, lectures, consultancies, etc. for cash-strapped scientists at public institutions to investigate your product. Remember, "industry-funded research is 4 to 8 times more likely than independently funded research to result in findings favorable to the sponsor".
   
2. See what they produce and reward those who put out positive results with continued funding, while cutting support when you get results that don't help you sell products. It's survival of the fittest - but don't worry, the theory of evolution is public domain and can be freely exploited without necessitating royalty payments to the descendants of Charles Darwin.
3. After a few cycles of this "directed evolution of truth" the data should more or less be saying what you want. Polish things off by having your scientific pawns publish drastically over-hyped and over-stated interpretations of their data in a peer-reviewed journal, the higher the impact factor the better. Boisterously announce the publication of these findings with an even more over-hyped press release to major media outlets. Don't forget to to reward your peons with an all-expenses paid trip or at least a nice dinner party. Or maybe a chocolate bar.
   

I think the big pharmas were probably one of the first to use this method to beef up the street cred of their drugs, and more recently other industries like the winemakers have been getting into the action. Sure...a glass of red wine a day is the key to longevity because it contains flavonoids. Then again, if you're really after health, you could always skip out on the toxic alcohol content and just eat a grape or drink some juice.

Anyway, now it's chocolate-funded research, and things are just getting so ridiculous it's funny. This great article by blogger Mark Klempner describes how the Mars bar company is manipulating academia to demonstrate the supposed benefits of the "flavanols" in their products, while of course ignoring the massive negative effects of the sugars and fats they contain. I mean come on, we're talking about JUNK FOOD here. I would be embarrassed to be associated with a would-be serious academic institution such as the University of California at Davis, who support a Mars bar endowed chair in nutrition and have allowed their researchers to recieve at total of $10 million in research funding from the chocolate bar maker. Maybe they should be calling themselves something like "Department of Junk Food and Obesity Promotion, University of Mars Bar at Davis" instead. These guys even have a paper in PNAS that is commonly cited on chocolate industry propaganda websites. On these sites you can find quotes from people at the center of this conflict of interest, like Harold Schmitz, Mars Chief Scientific Officer and UC Davis visiting professor in nutrition: "Traditional cocoa processing often destroys the flavanols, but Mars technology helps to retain these naturally occurring nutrients from cocoa. This new research emphasizes the importance of understanding the potential public health applications of emerging cocoa science, which is a challenge we take very seriously at Mars." Priceless.

The saddest part is that it's usually not obvious, when you read a paper like this, see a poster or hear a talk, that the research has been funded for corporate gain. Instead you're just left wondering why you've wasted your time listening to a bunch of meaningless, over-stated, irrelevent and massaged data disguised to look like science.

Great piece though, and I think he's bang on. The Brave New World reference is interesting although disconcerting. (Naturally, Klempner manages to tie global waming into his article as well).