By The Economist, Apr. 18, 2015

SCIENCE, popular prejudice often has it, is a man’s world. These days that is not actually true of many disciplines, particularly biological ones. But some, though not all, recent research has suggested women are indeed still discriminated against by the processes of recruitment and advancement on which scientific careers are built—especially in fields such as engineering, mathematics and physics that remain male bastions.

The results of an experiment conducted by Wendy Williams and Stephen Ceci of Cornell University are therefore intriguing. As they report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr Williams and Dr Ceci have searched for sex bias in one of the most important steps on the scientific career path, recruitment to a so-called tenure-track position. If the successful candidate does well in such a post it can lead to a job for life. And the two researchers did indeed find bias—against men.