January 2017

Female postdoctoral fellowship applicants are half as likely as their male counterparts to receive glowing recommendation letters, according to a study by researchers at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO). Led by Kuheli Dutt, assistant director of academic affairs and diversity at the observatory, the researchers also found that both male and female scientists tend to write stronger recommendation letters for men than for women. The findings add more evidence of implicit, or unconscious, bias that women are perceived as weaker in the sciences than men.