14 | New Scientist | 26 September 2020
NEWS coverage in the US of
scientific work is biased against
researchers whose names aren’t
of British origin.
Hao Peng at the University
of Michigan and his colleagues
analysed more than 230,
news stories from 288 US outlets,
which reported on around
100,000 different research
papers across all scientific fields.
The team looked at whether
the first authors of papers were
mentioned in news coverage.
Very often, these are junior
researchers who have contributed
most significantly to the work.
Peng and his colleagues found
that first authors who had names
that weren’t of British origin
were significantly less likely to be
mentioned or quoted than first
authors with names that were.
On average, the probability of
featuring in a news article was up
to 6.4 per cent less for researchers
with names of non-British origin.
The greatest decreases were for
people with names of Asian or
African origin compared withthose whose names were of
European origin. The greatest
disparity was seen in general
news outlets, such as certain
newspapers, where researchers
with names of African and
Chinese origin were 10 per
cent less likely to be mentioned
(arxiv.org/abs/2009.01896).
To perform the analysis, the
team used Altmetric, a database
that aggregates media and online
coverage of scientific papers.
“Most people who work
in journalism have personal
anecdotes that support thesefindings,” says Marcus Ryder at
Birmingham City University, UK.
“There is no doubt that the media
confers legitimacy and authority
to deciding who the voices we
should be listening to are.”When examining possible
factors contributing to the bias,
the team found that geographical
location was a major component,but that this alone didn’t account
for the disparity. Authors with
names not of British origin based
outside the US were even less
likely to be mentioned, potentially
because of perceived difficulties
in interviewing them due to
time-zone or language-fluency
issues, according to the study.
“[Media coverage] not only
affects public perception about
who is a scientist, it also affects
new scientists when they enter the
academic world – who they choose
to be advised by, who they choose
to collaborate with,” says Peng.
The researchers noted a small,
gradual increase in the number
of times scientists with names of
Chinese or Indian origin, as well
as those in languages derived
from Latin, were mentioned. They
predict that scientists in these
groups may reach parity with
colleagues who have names of
British origin in five to 12 years,
but that the gap will persist for
other minority ethnicity authors.
The team also found a gender
imbalance across the news
coverage, but it reflected existing
disparities between the numbers
of male and female researchers
in those scientific fields. ❚“ People with names not
of British origin were
significantly less likely to
be mentioned or quoted”Science in the mediaDonna LuMBPHOT
O/ALA
MYNews
A news stand
in the New York
subway in ManhattanHuman evolutionPeople in Cape Verde
have evolved better
malaria resistanceWE ARE still evolving, and one of the
best examples of recent evolution in
people has been found on the Cape
Verde islands in the Atlantic. There,
a gene variant that confers a form
of malaria resistance has become
more common over just 550 years.
Amy Goldberg at Duke University
in North Carolina and her colleagues
analysed data on gene variants in564 Cape Verdeans. They found
that around half the people on
the outer islands have a variant
of a gene called DARC that protects
against malaria.
However, on the more densely
populated main island of Santiago,
where there have been many
malaria outbreaks over the
centuries, about 80 per cent
of people have the variant.
On Santiago, there has been
strong selection for the malaria-
protecting variant: in other words,
the population has evolved.The Cape Verde archipelago was
uninhabited before Portuguese
voyagers arrived in the 15th
century, bringing slaves from Africa
with them. This explains why the
DARC gene variant is present in the
Cape Verdean population today,
because it is also seen among many
people of West African origin.
The strength of selection for a
particular gene variant – how fast
it spreads per generation – can be
calculated, and is called the selection
coefficient. “We estimate the
selection coefficient is approximately0.08, one of the highest inferred
in humans,” the researchers write
(bioRxiv, doi.org/d9mh).
By comparison, selection
coefficients are estimated to be
between 0.02 and 0.14 for the
lactase tolerance variants that
allow adults to digest milk, says
Sharon Grossman at the Broad
Institute in Massachusetts, who
wasn’t involved in the research.
For the sickle cell variants that
also convey malaria resistance,
they are between 0.05 and 0.18. ❚
Michael Le PageUS science coverage is biased against
people with names not of British origin