{"id":33894,"date":"2020-11-23T09:57:57","date_gmt":"2020-11-23T08:57:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/news\/?p=33894"},"modified":"2024-03-22T11:12:03","modified_gmt":"2024-03-22T10:12:03","slug":"statement-mentorships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/news\/lab-matters\/statement-mentorships\/","title":{"rendered":"Statement on recent paper on mentorships in academia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>It is with great concern that we have learnt of a study by AlShebli <em>et al.<\/em>, which has recently been published in the journal <em>Nature Communications<\/em>. The study purports to analyse mentor\u2013mentee relationships across ten academic disciplines based on co-authorships in publication records spanning more than 100 years, and has inferred from these potential effects on the mentees\u2019 later publication records.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mentorship is an important topic that deserves academic investigation, but this study is methodologically flawed \u2013 the data used are about co-authorships, which do not equate to mentorship, or even \u2018informal mentorship\u2019.&nbsp;Co-authors from different labs typically only discuss the project or study in hand, and not someone\u2019s career path and goals, challenges and struggles, and a myriad of other things that would constitute a supportive and positive mentor\u2013mentee relationship.&nbsp;This was raised by reviewers, but was not addressed in the published version of the manuscript in an adequate manner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The authors\u2019 conclusion that being mentored by a female scientist is detrimental to the future career of the mentee is unsubstantiated and should be retracted forcefully. That this flawed message is being amplified through publication in a respected journal is difficult to believe. We implore the publisher to take action.&nbsp;Such a message undermines the academic community\u2019s shared efforts to encourage young scientists to follow scientific careers regardless of their gender or other protected characteristics. Science benefits from diversity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eileen Furlong on behalf of EMBL<br \/><sub>Chair of the Equality and Diversity Committee<br \/>Head of the Genome Biology Unit<\/sub><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Update (23 December 2020):<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On 21 December 2020, Nature Communications posted a\u00a0<a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-020-20617-y\">Retraction Note<\/a>\u00a0stating that \u201cThe Authors are retracting this Article in\u00a0response to criticisms about the assumptions underpinning the Article in terms of the identification\u00a0of mentorship relationships and the measure of mentorship quality, challenging the interpretation\u00a0of the conclusions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>EMBL\u2019s Eileen Furlong, Chair of the Equality and Diversity Committee and Head of the Genome Biology Unit, responds to the recent Nature Comms paper on the potential effects of mentor\u2013mentee relationships.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":22499,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17597,3],"tags":[492,3694,974,4736,493,5614],"embl_taxonomy":[],"class_list":["post-33894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-embl-announcements","category-lab-matters","tag-diversity","tag-equality","tag-inclusion","tag-mentorship","tag-women-in-science","tag-women-in-stem"],"acf":{"featured":true,"show_featured_image":true,"color":"#007B53","link_color":"#fff","article_intro":"","related_links":false,"article_sources":[{"source_description":"<p>AlShebli B <em>et al.<\/em> The association between early career informal mentorship in academic collaborations and junior author performance. <em>Nature Communications<\/em>, published on 17 November 2020, DOI: 10.1038\/s41467-020-19723-8<\/p>\n","source_link_url":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41467-020-19723-8"},{"source_description":"<p>AlShebli B\u00a0<em>et al.<\/em>\u00a0Retraction Note:\u00a0The association between early career informal mentorship in academic collaborations and\u00a0junior author performance.\u00a0<em>Nature\u00a0Communications<\/em>, published on 21 December 2020, DOI:\u00a0https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41467-020-19723-8<\/p>\n","source_link_url":"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-020-20617-y"}],"in_this_article":false,"youtube_url":"","mp4_url":"","video_caption":"","press_contact":"None","translations":false,"embl_taxonomy_term_who":false,"embl_taxonomy_term_what":false,"embl_taxonomy_term_where":false,"vf_locked":false},"embl_taxonomy_terms":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Statement on recent paper on mentorships in academia | EMBL<\/title>\n<meta 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