The preeminence of ethnic diversity in scientific collaboration

i4's Toward Tomorrow Program Enhancing Collaboration, Connections, and Community Using Bioinspired Design

The goal of our i4's Toward Tomorrow Program is to enrich the future workforce with STEM by providing students with an early, inspirational, interdisciplinary experience fostering inclusive excellence. We attempt to open the eyes of students who never realized how much their voice is urgently needed by providing an opportunity for involvement, imagination, invention, and innovation. Students see how what they are learning, designing, and building matters to their own life, community, and society. Our program embodies convergence by obliterating artificially created, disciplinary boundaries to go far beyond STEM or even STEAM by including artists, designers, social scientists, and entrepreneurs collaborating in diverse teams using scientific discoveries to create inventions that could shape our future. Our program connects two recent revolutions by amplifying Bioinspired Design with the Maker Movement and its democratizing effects empowering anyone to innovate and change the world. Our course is founded in original discovery. We explain the process of biological discovery and the importance of scaling, constraints, and complexity in selecting systems for bioinspired design. By spotlighting scientific writing and publishing, students become more science literate, learn how to decompose a biology research paper, extract the principles, and then propose a novel design by analogy. Using careful, early scaffolding of individual design efforts, students build the confidence to interact in teams. Team building exercises increase self-efficacy and reveal the advantages of a diverse set of minds. Final team video and poster project designs are presented in a public showcase. Our program forms a student-centered creative action community comprised of a large-scale course, student-led classes, and a student-created university organization. The program structure facilitates a community of learners that shifts the students' role from passive knowledge recipients to active co-constructors of knowledge being responsible for their own learning, discovery, and inventions. Students build their own shared database of discoveries, classes, organizations, research openings, internships, and public service options. Students find next step opportunities so they can see future careers. Description of our program here provides the necessary context for our future publications on assessment that examine 21st century skills, persistence in STEM, and creativity.

The imperative for scientific societies to change the face of academia: Recommendations for immediate action

As organizations that facilitate collaboration and communication, scientific societies have an opportunity, and a responsibility, to drive inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility in science in academia. The American Association for Anatomy (AAA), with its expressed and practiced culture of engagement, can serve as a model of best practice for other professional associations working to become more inclusive of individuals from historically underrepresented groups. In this publication, we acknowledge anatomy's exclusionary past, describe the present face of science in academia, and provide recommendations for societies, including the AAA, to accelerate change in academia. We are advocating for scientific societies to investigate inequities and revise practices for inclusivity; develop and empower underrepresented minority leadership; and commit resources in a sustained manner as an investment in underrepresented scientists who bring diverse perspectives and lived experiences to science in academia.

Mobilizing cross-disciplinary teams to advance translational research using design thinking methods

Funding agencies are increasingly seeking team-based approaches to tackling complex research questions, but there is a need to mobilize translational teams and create shared visions and strategic action plans long before specific funding opportunities are considered or even released. This is particularly evident for teams who want to pursue large-scale grants, where cross-disciplinary synergy is often required. In response, we created Research Jams, which are engaging yet structured brainstorming sessions that bring together groups for the first time to collectively generate novel research ideas, critically map the future of initiatives, prioritize opportunities and next steps, and build community. Research Jams leveraged various aspects of design thinking, including divergence and convergence, visual thinking, and amplifying diversity. We piloted seven Research Jams for a collective 129 researchers, staff, and partners across 50 University of Michigan units and external organizations. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with the vast majority of survey respondents indicating that the sessions were helpful for surfacing shared ideas or visions and that opportunities emerged they would like to pursue. Research Jams were ideal for cross-disciplinary groups who wanted to collaboratively ideate and strategize around complex problems in translational research. Importantly, these models have the potential for implementation with groups in any disciplinary domain who want to spur collaborations to address challenging problems. Our ultimate goal is for Research Jams to be the first intervention within a comprehensive support pathway that extends from early brainstorming all the way to grant submission.

A Diverse Physician-Scientist Pipeline to Fight Structural Racism

Translational research plays a pivotal role in leveraging good science to serve humanity. Structural racism and a lack of diversity severely limit our potential as scientists to exert a maximum impact. This moment calls for a renewed commitment to ridding science of racism and bias and promoting diversity, which makes us more effective at innovating and delivering therapeutics to the patients we serve.

A large ‘discovery’ experiment: Gender Initiative for Excellence (Genie) at Chalmers University of Technology

Sweden tops gender equality rankings, but Swedish academia is still lacking women in top positions. To address gender inequality in its faculty, Chalmers University of Technology has invested 300 million SEK (30 million Euros) over 10 years in Gender initiative for Excellence (Genie). Genie aims to increase the university’s success and excellence via gender equality efforts. In this editorial, we want to share insights on explicit efforts during Genie’s first 2.5 years with the goal to inspire and advise other universities and researchers.

Ending Gender Inequality in Cardiovascular Clinical Trial Leadership: JACC Review Topic of the Week

Women are under-represented as leaders of cardiovascular randomized controlled trials, representing 1 in 10 lead authors of cardiovascular trials published in high-impact journals. Although the proportion of cardiovascular specialists who are women has increased in recent years, the proportion of cardiovascular clinical trialists who are women has not. This gap, underpinned by systemic sexism, has not been adequately addressed. The benefits of diverse randomized controlled trial leadership extend to patients and professionals. In this position statement, we present strategies adopted by some organizations to end gender inequality in research leadership. We offer an actionable roadmap for early-career researchers, scientists, academic institutions, professional societies, trial sponsors, and journals to follow, with the goal of harnessing the strength of women and under-represented groups as research leaders and facilitating a just culture in the cardiovascular clinical trial enterprise.

Beyond correlation: Towards matching strategy for causal inference in Information Science

Correlation has become a fundamental method for information science. However, correlations are limited in making concrete decisions. In this article, we detail how causal inference could be utilised in the field of information science. There are six main steps of implementing matching for causal inference, namely, selecting candidate control variables, determining control variables, calculating similarities among all samples, forming control group, examining the performance of control group and estimating causal effects. As an example, this article applies causal inference to investigate whether Nobel Physics award increases the after-award citations. The method is presented in a step-by-step manner so that researchers can reproduce our analysis in the future.

Diversity in Scientific Discovery

Presented here is a brief discussion on the imperative need and thoughtful approaches to embracing diversity, equity and inclusion within scientific enquiry.

Affirming NIH's commitment to addressing structural racism in the biomedical research enterprise

NIH has acknowledged and committed to ending structural racism. The framework for NIH's approach, summarized here, includes understanding barriers; developing robust health disparities/equity research; improving its internal culture; being transparent and accountable; and changing the extramural ecosystem so that diversity, equity, and inclusion are reflected in funded research and the biomedical workforce.

Cross-cultural research must prioritize equitable collaboration

Research centres in low- and middle-income countries are routinely circumvented in the production of cross-cultural research on human behaviour. Where local contributions are made, collaboration is rarely equitable and often uncredited in co-authorship. Efforts to decolonize the social sciences will remain inadequate until these norms are overturned.

Attracting Diverse Students to Field Experiences Requires Adequate Pay, Flexibility, and Inclusion

Access to field experiences can increase participation of diverse groups in the environmental and natural resources (ENR) workforce. Despite a growing interest among the ENR community to attract and retain diverse students, minimal data exist on what factors undergraduate students prioritize when applying for field experiences. Using a nationwide survey of US undergraduate ENR students, we show that attracting most students to field experiences—especially racial or ethnic minority students—will require pay above minimum wage. However, the concurrent landscape of pay in ENR fell short of meeting many students’ pay needs. Aside from pay, ENR students valued training in technical field skills and analytical or research skills, working with their desired study species or taxa, and working near school or family. Additional barriers beyond limited pay included incompatible schedules and noninclusive work environments. Our findings provide important insights for attracting a diverse workforce to this critical stage in career advancement for students in ENR.

The dominance of big teams in China’s scientific output

Modern science is dominated by scientific productions from teams. A recent finding shows that teams of both large and small sizes are essential in research, prompting us to analyze the extent to which a country’s scientific work is carried out by big or small teams. Here, using over 26 million publications from Web of Science, we find that China’s research output is more dominated by big teams than the rest of the world, which is particularly the case in fields of natural science. Despite the global trend that more papers are written by big teams, China’s drop in small team output is much steeper. As teams in China shift from small to large size, the team diversity that is essential for innovative work does not increase as much as that in other countries. Using the national average as the baseline, we find that the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) supports fewer small teams than the National Science Foundation (NSF) of the United States does, implying that big teams are preferred by grant agencies in China. Our finding provides new insights into the concern of originality and innovation in China, which indicates a need to balance small and big teams.

Neural embeddings of scholarly periodicals reveal complex disciplinary organizations

Understanding the structure of knowledge domains is one of the foundational challenges in the science of science. Here, we propose a neural embedding technique that leverages the information contained in the citation network to obtain continuous vector representations of scientific periodicals. We demonstrate that our periodical embeddings encode nuanced relationships between periodicals and the complex disciplinary and interdisciplinary structure of science, allowing us to make cross-disciplinary analogies between periodicals. Furthermore, we show that the embeddings capture meaningful "axes" that encompass knowledge domains, such as an axis from "soft" to "hard" sciences or from "social" to "biological" sciences, which allow us to quantitatively ground periodicals on a given dimension. By offering novel quantification in the science of science, our framework may, in turn, facilitate the study of how knowledge is created and organized.

How can evolutionary and biological anthropologists engage broader audiences?

OBJECTIVES

With our diverse training, theoretical and empirical toolkits, and rich data, evolutionary and biological anthropologists (EBAs) have much to contribute to research and policy decisions about climate change and other pressing social issues. However, we remain largely absent from these critical, ongoing efforts. Here, we draw on the literature and our own experiences to make recommendations for how EBAs can engage broader audiences, including the communities with whom we collaborate, a more diverse population of students, researchers in other disciplines and the development sector, policymakers, and the general public. These recommendations include: (1) playing to our strength in longitudinal, place-based research, (2) collaborating more broadly, (3) engaging in greater public communication of science, (4) aligning our work with open-science practices to the extent possible, and (5) increasing diversity of our field and teams through intentional action, outreach, training, and mentorship.

CONCLUSIONS

We EBAs need to put ourselves out there: research and engagement are complementary, not opposed to each other. With the resources and workable examples we provide here, we hope to spur more EBAs to action.

How to Navigate Trainee-Mentor Relationships and Interpersonal Dynamics in the Lab

Relationships with mentors and labmates are defining aspects of a researcher's journey in science. Ideally, these interactions are outstanding opportunities to learn from others and provide the basis for lifelong collaborations. Unfortunately, sometimes interpersonal dynamics in the lab are challenging. Graduate students entering the lab can greatly benefit from advice about navigating the interpersonal aspects of doing science. This article covers essential recommendations for developing a good trainee-mentor relationship and working well with peers in the lab, or being a "good lab citizen." Lab members-especially graduate students-often spend more time with labmates than with their friends and family during their graduate career, making these relationships essential to their well-being. The guidance also covers some advice for handling a tense relationship or problematic work environment. Finally, the advice concludes by discussing how to manage the fear of failure, overcome imposter syndrome, develop self-awareness, and cope with stress. These four issues are fundamental to success in research but are not discussed with graduate students as much as may be necessary. © 2021 Wiley Periodicals LLC.

Algorithmic and human prediction of success in human collaboration from visual features

As groups are increasingly taking over individual experts in many tasks, it is ever more important to understand the determinants of group success. In this paper, we study the patterns of group success in Escape The Room, a physical adventure game in which a group is tasked with escaping a maze by collectively solving a series of puzzles. We investigate (1) the characteristics of successful groups, and (2) how accurately humans and machines can spot them from a group photo. The relationship between these two questions is based on the hypothesis that the characteristics of successful groups are encoded by features that can be spotted in their photo. We analyze >43K group photos (one photo per group) taken after groups have completed the game—from which all explicit performance-signaling information has been removed. First, we find that groups that are larger, older and more gender but less age diverse are significantly more likely to escape. Second, we compare humans and off-the-shelf machine learning algorithms at predicting whether a group escaped or not based on the completion photo. We find that individual guesses by humans achieve 58.3% accuracy, better than random, but worse than machines which display 71.6% accuracy. When humans are trained to guess by observing only four labeled photos, their accuracy increases to 64%. However, training humans on more labeled examples (eight or twelve) leads to a slight, but statistically insignificant improvement in accuracy (67.4%). Humans in the best training condition perform on par with two, but worse than three out of the five machine learning algorithms we evaluated. Our work illustrates the potentials and the limitations of machine learning systems in evaluating group performance and identifying success factors based on sparse visual cues.

Social groups with diverse personalities mitigate physiological stress in a songbird

Social groups often consist of diverse phenotypes, including personality types, and this diversity is known to affect the functioning of the group as a whole. Social selection theory proposes that group composition (i.e. social environment) also influences the performance of individual group members. However, the effect of group behavioural composition on group members remains largely unexplored, and it is still contentious whether individuals benefit more in a social environment with homogeneous or diverse behavioural composition. We experimentally formed groups of house sparrows Passer domesticus with high and low diversity of personality (exploratory behaviour), and found that their physiological state (body condition, physiological stress and oxidative damage) improved with increasing group-level diversity of personality. These findings demonstrate that group personality composition affects the condition of group members and individuals benefit from social heterosis (i.e. associating with a diverse set of behavioural types). This aspect of the social life can play a key role in affiliation rules of social animals and might explain the evolutionary coexistence of different personalities in nature.

Uncloaking a Lost Cause: Decolonizing ancestry estimation in the United States

Since the professionalization of US‐based forensic anthropology in the 1970s, ancestry estimation has been included as a standard part of the biological profile, because practitioners have assumed it necessary to achieve identifications in medicolegal contexts. Simultaneously, forensic anthropologists have not fully considered the racist context of the criminal justice system in the United States related to the treatment of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color; nor have we considered that ancestry estimation might actually hinder identification efforts because of entrenched racial biases. Despite ongoing criticisms from mainstream biological anthropology that ancestry estimation perpetuates race science, forensic anthropologists have continued the practice. Recent years have seen the prolific development of retooled typological approaches with 21st century statistical prowess to include methods for estimating ancestry from cranial morphoscopic traits, despite no evidence that these traits reflect microevolutionary processes or are suitable genetic proxies for population structure; and such approaches have failed to critically evaluate the societal consequences for perpetuating the biological race concept. Around the country, these methods are enculturated in every aspect of the discipline ranging from university classrooms, to the board‐certification examination marking the culmination of training, to standard operating procedures adopted by forensic anthropology laboratories. Here, we use critical race theory to interrogate the approaches utilized to estimate ancestry to include a critique of the continued use of morphoscopic traits, and we assert that the practice of ancestry estimation contributes to white supremacy. Based on the lack of scientific support that these traits reflect evolutionary history, and the inability to disentangle skeletal‐based ancestry estimates from supporting the biological validity of race, we urge all forensic anthropologists to abolish the practice of ancestry estimation.

Large body size variation is associated with low communication success in tandem running ants

Abstract

Diversity in animal groups is often assumed to increase group performance. In insect colonies, genetic, behavioural and morphological variation among workers can improve colony functioning and resilience. However, it has been hypothesized that during communication processes, differences between workers, e.g. in body size, could also have negative effects. Tandem running is a common recruitment strategy in ants and allows a leader to guide a nestmate follower to resources. A substantial proportion of tandem runs fail because leader and follower lose contact. Using the ant Temnothorax nylanderi as a model system, we tested the hypothesis that tandem running success is impaired if leader and follower differ in size. Indeed, we found that the success rate of tandem pairs drops considerably as size variation increases: tandem runs were unsuccessful when the leader–follower size difference exceeded 10%, whereas ~ 80% of tandem runs were successful when ants differed less than 5% in body length. Possible explanations are that size differences are linked to differences in walking speed or sensory perception. Ants did not choose partners of similar size, but extranidal workers were larger than intranidal workers, which could reduce recruitment mistakes because it reduced the chance that very large and very small ants perform tandem runs together. Our results suggest that phenotypic differences between interacting workers can have negative effects on the efficiency of communication processes. Whether phenotypic variation has positive or negative effects is likely to depend on the task and the phenotypic trait that shows variation.

Significance statement

Diversity is often assumed to increase colony performance in social insects. However, phenotypic differences among workers could also have negative effects, e.g. during communication. Tandem running is a common recruitment strategy in ants, but tandem runs often fail when ants lose contact. We used the ant Temnothorax nylanderi to test the hypothesis that body size differences between tandem leader and follower impair tandem communication. We show that the success rate of tandem pairs drops considerably as size variation increases, possibly because ants of varying size also differ in walking speed. Our study supports the hypothesis that phenotypic variation among workers might not always be beneficial and can negatively impact the efficiency of communication processes.

Examining gender diversity growth as a model for inclusion of all underrepresented persons in medical physics

The labor force of Medical Physics is one of the most gender diverse in the field of Physics, as it has attained the proportional achievement of ~30% women worldwide (Tsapaki et al. Phys Medica. 2018;55:33-39). While great strides have been made toward a gender diverse workforce, women still comprise an underrepresented group. Many strategies have been suggested to increase the participation of underrepresented persons by addressing unconscious biases, increasing opportunities, dedicated hiring policies, and providing support networks in science and medicine (Barabino et al. Sci Eng Ethics. 2019; Coe et al. Lancet. 2019), yet the personnel landscape remains largely uniform. Herein, the conditions, strategies, and approaches that facilitated gender diversity in Medical Physics are considered as a means to further the inclusion of other underrepresented groups through exemplars of mentorship, addressing unconscious biases and the implementation of inclusive practices. Furthermore, the potential for gender diversity to act as a catalyst to create an environment that is more accepting of diversity and supports and encourages inclusive practices for the participation and inclusion of other underrepresented groups in Medical Physics is discussed.

The association between early career informal mentorship in academic collaborations and junior author performance

We study mentorship in scientific collaborations, where a junior scientist is supported by potentially multiple senior collaborators, without them necessarily having formal supervisory roles. We identify 3 million mentor-protégé pairs and survey a random sample, verifying that their relationship involved some form of mentorship. We find that mentorship quality predicts the scientific impact of the papers written by protégés post mentorship without their mentors. We also find that increasing the proportion of female mentors is associated not only with a reduction in post-mentorship impact of female protégés, but also a reduction in the gain of female mentors. While current diversity policies encourage same-gender mentorships to retain women in academia, our findings raise the possibility that opposite-gender mentorship may actually increase the impact of women who pursue a scientific career. These findings add a new perspective to the policy debate on how to best elevate the status of women in science.

Ten simple rules for building an antiracist lab

Demographics of the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce and student body in the US and Europe continue to show severe underrepresentation of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). Among the documented causes of the persistent lack of diversity in STEM are bias, discrimination, and harassment of members of underrepresented minority groups (URMs). These issues persist due to continued marginalization, power imbalances, and lack of adequate policies against misconduct in academic and other scientific institutions. All scientists can play important roles in reversing this trend by shifting the culture of academic workplaces to intentionally implement equitable and inclusive policies, set norms for acceptable workplace conduct, and provide opportunities for mentorship and networking. As scientists are increasingly acknowledging the lack of racial and ethnic diversity in science, there is a need for clear direction on how to take antiracist action. Here we present 10 rules to help labs develop antiracists policies and action in an effort to promote racial and ethnic diversity, equity, and inclusion in science.

Diversity and Political Leaning: Considerations for Epidemiology

The positive effects of increased diversity and inclusion in scientific research and practice are well documented. In this issue, DeVilbiss et al. (Am J Epidemiol. 2020;189(10):998-1010) present findings from a survey used to collect information to characterize diversity among epidemiologists and perceptions of inclusion in the epidemiologic profession. They capture identity across a range of personal characteristics, including race, gender, socioeconomic background, sexual orientation, religion, and political leaning. In this commentary, we assert that the inclusion of political leaning as an axis of identity alongside the others undermines the larger project of promoting diversity and inclusion in the profession and is symptomatic of the movement for "ideological diversity" in higher education. We identify why political leaning is not an appropriate metric of diversity and detail why prioritizing ideological diversity counterintuitively can work against equity building initiatives. As an alternative to ideological diversity, we propose that epidemiologists take up an existing framework for research and practice that centers the voices and perspectives of historically marginalized populations in epidemiologic work.

Identifying Barriers to Career Progression for Women in Science: Is COVID-19 Creating New Challenges?

This article summarizes discussions at a Gender Equity Workshop run during the Molecular Approaches to Malaria Conference in February 2020. Barriers to career progression in science for women and minority groups, along with suggestions to overcome ongoing roadblocks, are discussed. The emerging challenges that coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is bringing to this sector are also considered.

The Race toward Equity: Increasing Racial Diversity in Cancer Research and Cancer Care

Cancer research and cancer care require deliberate attention to racial diversity. Here we comment on the ongoing issues of diversity and racism in cancer research.

Does the mobility of scientists disrupt their collaboration stability?

To explore to what extent the mobility of scientists disrupts the stability of their research collaboration, we designed a measure − Collaboration Stability After Moving ( CSAM) − for scientists, retrieved 4343 US-related scientists’ curricula vitae (CVs) from the Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) website and publication records in the Web of Science database and applied a linear regression model to the dataset. Our findings include the following: (1) the more times a scientist moved, the more she or he is inclined to co-author with previous collaborators, (2) cross-country mobility disrupts the stability of research collaboration more than domestic mobility and (3) the stability of research collaboration correlates with scientists’ cultural background, cross-country work experience and research areas.