Nepotism and Sexism in Peer Review

Peer review is supposed to reward scientific ability, but how is ability scored? Wennerås and Wold’s study examines applications to the Swedish Medical Research Council’s 1995 postdoctoral fellowship competition. It turns internal assessments into evidence rather than relying solely on the gender distribution of successful applicants.

Scores do not directly read ability

The study covers 114 applicants: 52 women and 62 men. The authors compare several publication and impact measures, then examine whether competence ratings remain associated with gender and reviewer connections. They do not infer an entire discriminatory mechanism simply from fewer women receiving awards; they investigate why similar output might receive different recognition.

The scoring procedure also matters. Ratings of competence, methodology and relevance feed into a combined result, potentially amplifying differences between components. Numerical detail does not remove social judgment. Scores require scrutiny of their construction, aggregation and availability for independent examination.

Recusal and network advantage can coexist

The analysis includes links between applicants and committee members, even though an associated reviewer was excluded from scoring that application. This does not make every professional acquaintance evidence of misconduct. It questions whether formal recusal alone prevents a network’s prestige from shaping collective evaluation. Access to records makes that question testable beyond unsuccessful applicants’ impressions.

This observational study concerns one funding body and competition year. Publication impact measures are not unbiased measures of scientific worth, and modeled associations are not randomized causal estimates. Its productivity comparisons should not become a universal multiplier for every discipline and era. The more transferable demand is for transparent criteria, examinable scores and institutional accountability.

The science-faculty hiring experiment supplies a different design that controls application materials. Research on disciplinary beliefs about brilliance asks whose excellence is easier to imagine before scoring even begins.