The Diversity-Innovation Paradox in Science
The Diversity-Innovation Paradox in Science
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DOI：
10.1073/pnas.1915378117
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发表时间：
2020-04-28
影响因子：
11.1
通讯作者：
McFarland, Daniel A.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Hofstra, Bas;Kulkarni, Vivek V.;McFarland, Daniel A.
以前的工作发现了一个多样性悖论：多样性孕育创新，但代表性不足的群体，多样化的组织在他们内部的职业生涯不太成功。多样性悖论是否也适用于科学家？我们通过利用1977年至2015年接近120万美国博士生的近完整人口来研究这一点，并遵循他们的职业生涯进入出版和教师职位。我们使用文本分析和机器学习来回答一系列问题：我们如何检测科学创新？代表性不足的群体更有可能产生科学创新吗？代表性不足的群体的创新是否得到采纳和奖励？我们的分析表明，代表性不足的群体产生更高的科学新奇性。然而，他们的新贡献被贬值和打折：例如，性别和少数种族的新贡献被其他学者以低于性别和种族多数的新贡献的比率接受，性别和少数种族的同样有影响力的贡献不太可能比多数群体带来成功的科学事业。这些结果表明，在学术生涯中，可能存在不必要的分层复制，这种分层低估了多样性在创新中的作用，并部分解释了学术界某些群体的代表性不足。
Prior work finds a diversity paradox: Diversity breeds innovation, yet underrepresented groups that diversify organizations have less successful careers within them. Does the diversity paradox hold for scientists as well? We study this by utilizing a near-complete population of similar to 1.2 million US doctoral recipients from 1977 to 2015 and following their careers into publishing and faculty positions. We use text analysis and machine learning to answer a series of questions: How do we detect scientific innovations? Are underrepresented groups more likely to generate scientific innovations? And are the innovations of underrepresented groups adopted and rewarded? Our analyses show that underrepresented groups produce higher rates of scientific novelty. However, their novel contributions are devalued and discounted: For example, novel contributions by gender and racial minorities are taken up by other scholars at lower rates than novel contributions by gender and racial majorities, and equally impactful contributions of gender and racial minorities are less likely to result in successful scientific careers than for majority groups. These results suggest there may be unwarranted reproduction of stratification in academic careers that discounts diversity's role in innovation and partly explains the underrepresentation of some groups in academia.