Are Claims of Fairness Toward Women in the Academy "Manufactured"? The Risk of Basing Arguments on Incomplete Data

Claims of widespread sexism in academic science frequently appear both in the mainstream media and in prestigious science journals. Often these claims are based on an unsystematic sampling of evidence or on anecdotes, and in many cases these claims are not supported by comprehensive analyses. Here we illustrate the importance of considering the full corpus of scientific data by focusing on a recent set of claims by two philosophers of science who argue that researchers who fail to find evidence of sexism in some domains of academia-such as tenure-track hiring, grant funding, journal reviewing, letters of recommendation, and salary-are as epistemically and socially problematic as are those who deny claims of anthropogenic climate change. We argue that such claims are misguided, and the result of ignoring important evidence. We show here that when the totality of evidence is considered, claims of widespread sexism are inconsistent with the canons of science.