Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 117, Issue 17, Pages 9284-9291Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1915378117
Keywords
diversity; innovation; science; inequality; sociology of science
Categories
Funding
- Stanford University
- Stanford Research Computing Center
- NSF [1633036, 1827477, 1829240]
- Dutch Organization for Scientific Research [NWO] [019.181SG.005]
- Direct For Computer & Info Scie & Enginr
- Div Of Information & Intelligent Systems [1633036] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Scie
- Divn Of Social and Economic Sciences [1827477] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Scie
- SBE Off Of Multidisciplinary Activities [1829240] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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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.
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