The Diversity–Innovation Paradox in Science (2020)
Bas Hofstra, Daniel A. McFarland
rating good
type nonfiction/peer-reviewed article
concepts
science/metascience sociology
2021/01/26 By analyzing data from nearly all US PhD recipients and their dissertations across three decades, this paper finds demographically underrepresented students innovate at higher rates than majority students, but their novel contributions are discounted and less likely to earn them academic positions. The discounting of minorities’ innovations may partly explain their underrepresentation in influential positions of academia.
- Underrepresented groups produce higher rates of scientific novelty, but contributions are devalued and discounted
- Applies to racial and gender minorities
- Link between diversity & innovation not paralleled by that of diversity & career success
- Dataset = all US PhD theses from 1977-2015, linked to census data
- Calculated "innovation" by novel conceptual linkages, and how often that novel link is uptaken in later papers (thus capturing impact along with novelty)
- Bc innovation can sometimes not require being up taken (uptake itself can be the innovation!), used both metrics
- The more students are underrepresented by race or gender in their discipline, the more likely they are to introduce novel linkages, BUT the more students are represented by gender, the higher impact/uptake of their novel linkages is
- White men → more impactful novel linkages, but all other groups → more novel linkages overall
- Why do novel linkages from underrepresented groups receive less uptake?
- Novel linkages are between more distal concepts
- Underrepresented genders and races also less likely to continue research careers, even when novelty and impact are held constant
- Positive correlation btw the two varies by race and gender— less long term return for novelty on career for underrepresented