[in_cahoots]

I wonder if they controlled for age in this study. Women in the sciences are younger than men (on average), so a dual-female paper is more likely to be from two contemporaries, while a dual-male paper could more easily be from an old prof and a young one. From what I've seen, the more established author tends to get more of the credit/prestige, even though the less-established one tends to do more of the work.

[jkn]

The story seems to be that when Janet writes with George, her colleagues infer that George deserves the credit. That might be a reasonable inference if women were more likely to join research collaborations as the junior partner, but in fact Ms. Sarsons finds that they are less likely to do this.

[barry-cotter]

Age doesn't appear to be in the pdf. A surprising omission.

http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/sarsons/files/gender_groupw...

[digbyloftus]

That does seem very flawed. If there's a strong correlation between gender and age in the field then why would that be not accounted for? I can definitely see people assuming the older person was the brains/leader of a project.

[jacquesm]

> while a dual-male paper could more easily be from an old prof and a young one.

So the best case to check if this is true is the reverse, an older female prof with a younger male.