Paris-Saclay University formed from a merger of several institutions.Credit: Alain Jocard/AFP via Getty
The board of directors of Paris-Saclay University, one of Europe’s biggest research campuses, has failed to elect a president after three rounds of voting. The result reflects an ongoing row over the leadership and management structure of Paris-Saclay, which was formed by merging more than a dozen institutions in 2020.
The two candidates had disagreed about how best to solve problems around staff morale and working conditions at the university but, in a vote on 30 April, neither received enough support to be named president. Yves Bernard, an electrical engineer and former director of Polytech Paris-Saclay, one of the institutions that merged to form the university, won more votes than former president Estelle Iacona in all three voting rounds, but failed to score the 19 out of 38 votes needed for an outright victory.
The stalemate means the recruitment process must start afresh. Paris-Saclay’s temporary administrator, Camille Galap, who has been at the helm since Iacona’s term ended in March, has said that a new call for candidates will be published as soon as possible.
“Clearly, the recruitment process will take quite some time,” says Patrick Couvreur, a pharmacologist at Paris-Saclay. “It is not good news for the university, after all the work that has been accomplished to give it an international dimension.” Couvreur supported Iacona for the presidency.
Flawed organization
Saclay accounts for around 13% of French research and brings together 220 labs, nearly 50,000 students, 8,100 researchers and members of academic staff and 8,500 technical and administrative staff members. The mega-campus has arguably achieved its goal of shining on the world stage: it was the first French university to appear on the Academic Ranking of World Universities’ top 20 list, in 2020, and has done so every year since, placing 15th in 2023.
Massive shake-up of French science system is biggest in decades
But Paris-Saclay’s complex structure has led to a number of issues for its researchers. Paris-Saclay completely subsumed ten faculties and institutes of the Paris-Sud University, while Four of France’s grandes écoles — elite higher-education institutions — along with the Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies (Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques) and two associate universities were brought under the same banner, but retained control over their budget and recruitment.
The leadership has become increasingly multilayered, says Couvreur, which has increased the number of managers and the administrative burden on staff at all levels. “This is leading to burnout, and is a disincentive to young scientists, who complain they have to undertake work they weren’t hired for.”
In 2021, a study by Paris-based human-resources consultancy Degest concluded that working conditions for staff members had deteriorated since the merger. Despite a massive communications campaign, staff had only a hazy idea of what the Paris-Saclay project was all about, the study said. They also lacked motivation because they felt management did not listen to them, and they questioned the purpose of a number of plans, such as creating links between the various components of the institution, and creating new graduate schools and a bachelor’s-degree institution. Some researchers feared a lack of resources for research, excessive time spent on coordinating operations and bidding for funding, competition between teams for the cash available and heavier administrative workloads.
Competing visions
The two presidential contenders had quite different visions for the future of the university, and views on how to address its problems. Bernard calls for a federated rather than centralized structure, with individual institutions working side by side. The distance of decision-making centres and central services from labs and teaching entities complicates management and procedures, Bernard says.
Iacona’s expired term as president began after she took over the post from education and research minister Sylvie Retailleau, who headed Paris-Saclay until 2022. In her reelection campaign, she said she is against “massive change” and rejects the idea of returning to a federated structure.
“I am in favour of adjusting what we have already in order to build an integrated — not a centralized — structure, where we all decide on policy together, and award the same degrees at each level,” she says.
The university’s board of directors is divided on which is the best approach, and so far shows no signs of rallying behind a single candidate. It is possible that a future contest will include new contenders. Iacona is undecided about whether she will continue her reelection bid, but Bernard intends to stand again. “I can’t identify any particular point in my programme that posed a problem,” he says, adding that he needs “to think about that before deciding on any adjustments”.
Female animals and women have been ignored or actively excluded in clinical and laboratory-based biomedical research since such research began. This was especially true until the US Congress passed the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Revitalization Act in 1993, which directed the NIH to establish guidelines on the inclusion of women and members of under-represented racial and ethnic groups in clinical trials.
By 2009, a review of 10 fields in biology found that more than 60% of studies with human participants reported on both sexes. For studies using non-human animals, however, only 26% included both male and female subjects1.
To try to correct this persistent imbalance, the NIH implemented extra guidelines in 2016 — this time, on the inclusion of sex as a biological variable in all preclinical research2. At least with respect to the inclusion of female individuals in basic research, this funding-agency mandate and others like it have been effective. Another bibliometric analysis found that 49% of 720 studies on animals published in 2019 used both males and females3.
Why it’s essential to study sex and gender, even as tensions rise
Although it is still early days and there is much room for improvement, the inclusion of female participants and animal subjects is already having a revolutionary impact on numerous areas of study — from chronic pain to mental health. Yet we see an impending collision between research policies and societal changes regarding ideas and attitudes around sex and gender that threatens this nascent enterprise. We also see the threat of lobbyists, legislators and others in the United States and elsewhere weaponizing research on sex differences — either to marginalize individuals or groups that they deem to be outside a narrowly defined norm, or to reinforce derogatory ideas about people who identify as divergent4. (In this article, sex refers to differences between females and males caused by biological factors, whereas gender refers to differences caused by social factors, including gender roles, expectations and identity.)
Our concern is that various critiques of research on sex differences from scholars approaching sex and gender from different viewpoints — in combination with valid concerns around the misinterpretation or misuse of findings — could undermine an approach that has proved both practical and powerful. As a counterweight to this possibility, here we argue for the ongoing value of comparing female and male individuals in biomedical research.
Mammalian biology
Several scholars have argued in recent years that an overemphasis on biological sex will distract investigators from the effects of gendered environments and of non-sex-related variables, such as age, ethnicity or socio-economic status, on many traits. Another common criticism is that comparing female and male participants ignores transgender people and other individuals who do not fall within these binary categories, leading to their further marginalization in society5. Others have argued that a focus on the difference between the mean values of male and female individuals distracts researchers from considering the variability around those means — the implication being that variability within a sex is more important than variability between sexes. Some even question whether sex is a viable concept6.
Before addressing these specific complaints, it is worth briefly reviewing the current understanding of mammalian biology as it relates to sex — as well as some of the diverse and surprising findings that have already emerged from research comparing two sexes.
We need more-nuanced approaches to exploring sex and gender in research
Sex has been with us since our species originated as a result of sexual reproduction. The division of humans and other mammals into two sexes, female and male, derives from the fact that each individual is created by the union of a sperm and an egg. On the basis of the type of germ cell (gamete) that reproducing individuals are able to produce, there are only two sex categories in mammals. (Intersex is not a third category with respect to the type of gamete individuals can produce.) Indeed, understanding of how the mammalian genome evolved and how it functions is based on the foundation of sexual reproduction.
In mammals, as in many other taxa, the biological difference between sexes starts with the genetic difference encoded by the sex chromosomes — typically XX and XY in mammals — which are the only features that differ in female and male zygotes at the beginning of life. The salient role of the sex chromosomes is determining whether the embryo will develop ovaries or testes, because this specifies the type of germ cell that will be made, and the level and secretory patterns of testicular or ovarian hormones. Sex-chromosome genes and gonadal hormones influence almost every tissue in the body. The result might be sex differences in tissue development and function, or similar phenotypes based on different underlying mechanisms7.
Sex differences in immune function might have arisen from the need for female organisms to transfer immunity to the next generation.Credit: Klein & Hubert/Nature Picture Library
As in all things in biology, in humans and other mammals there are variations in the number and type of sex chromosomes and in the downstream mechanisms determining the phenotypic features associated with sex. This leads to variability among individuals in diverse sex-related traits, such as genital anatomy, body size and some behaviours. Also, particularly in humans, biological factors that drive sex differences in cells and tissues are confounded by social and environmental factors that also cause differences between individuals.
To serve all individuals equitably — including those who experience an incongruency between the sex they were assigned at birth and their current gender identity, and those who do not find that they align with either the male or female sex category — the medical profession and biomedical community must identify and interrogate these variations in biological attributes and in lived experiences, all of which can influence people’s physiology, risk of developing disease and prognosis8. This includes carefully attending to the distinctions between cisgender, transgender and non-binary individuals when reporting findings.
Yet we maintain that, in humans and other mammals, the comparison of individuals who have XX chromosomes and ovaries with individuals who have XY chromosomes and testes is a necessary component of basic and clinical research that seeks to improve human health.
Rich pickings
Male and female individuals represent most of the mammalian population. And research regarding biological sex differences has focused first on the largest groups, but in a manner that provides insights about variation within and beyond the binary.
For example, investigators have manipulated factors such as gonadal hormones and sex-chromosome genes to test their effects on sexual differentiation and their role in sex differences in disease. These manipulations, which mimic numerous intersex variations, such as the presence of ovarian hormonal secretions in an individual with XY chromosomes, have shed light on the effects of hormones, sex-chromosome genes and other factors in everyone. Studies of people with a variety of naturally occurring hormonal and chromosomal differences, for instance, are consistent with the interpretation that prenatal exposure to androgens, such as testosterone, is an important component of male psychosocial development9.
Nature journals raise the bar on sex and gender reporting in research
Importantly, the study of female and male individuals, as defined here, establishes a baseline measurement against which to compare findings from those who do not fit into a binary categorization scheme.
Understanding the effects of sex also anchors discussions about how different gendered environments intersect with biological differences, to amplify or mitigate their effects. More than half a century of animal research has been key to developing concepts of mammalian sexual differentiation, because in animals, unlike in humans, researchers can manipulate single genes or molecules to observe their effects on phenotypes. Moreover, although numerous environmental or social effects can be manipulated and studied in animals, such as diet, stress and levels of interaction with other individuals, animals provide useful models of the biological effects of sex in the absence of hard-to-control human gendered variables, such as cultural norms and expectations around child care and work.
The power of comparing female and male individuals in biomedical research is demonstrated most convincingly, however, by the data themselves — as illustrated by four examples from our fields of expertise.
Sex chromosomes versus hormones. Until recently, all of the biological hypotheses proposed to explain the significant sex differences in body weight and metabolism found in humans and animals (including birds and other mammals) were centred on the action of hormones. And extensive research during the twentieth century supported the idea that, in mammals, almost all sex differences in tissues other than the gonads (the organs that produce the gametes) result from the effects of ovarian and testicular hormones.
By the early 2000s, researchers studying gonadal development had created mouse models in which the complement of sex chromosomes could be manipulated in individuals with the same type of gonad10. This meant that investigators could assess whether the sex chromosomes cause differences in phenotypes, even when levels of gonadal hormones are similar7. Studies using the modified mice, while confirming the importance of gonadal hormones in influencing body weight and metabolism, uncovered the effects of sex chromosomes11. Comparable studies have also shown that sex chromosomes have much broader effects on physiology and behaviour than was originally thought10.
Accounting for sex and gender makes for better science
The copy number of an X-linked gene called Kdm5c, for example, contributes to a sex difference found in mice in the metabolism of adipose cells12. Mice with XY chromosomes have one copy of Kdm5c. They also have less body fat than do mice with XX chromosomes, which have two copies of the Kdm5c gene.
Over the past two decades, investigators have found that similar sex-chromosome effects contribute to sex differences in many other physiological systems in mice. And these sex differences, in turn, affect individuals’ likelihood of developing autoimmune conditions, cardiovascular diseases, cancer and developmental defects in the neural tube, the embryonic precursor to the central nervous system. The X-linked gene Kdm6a, for instance, increases the severity of autoimmune disease, and protects against bladder cancer and an Alzheimer’s-like disease in XX mice7. Similarly, the Y-linked gene Uty protects against pulmonary hypertension in mice13. Sex-chromosome genes also affect mouse behaviour, from the social behaviour of juveniles to responses to pain, as well as the size of certain brain regions7,10.
All of this work in mice provides investigators with clues about where to look for potential therapeutic targets in the human genome, for diseases that tend to affect women and men differently.
Pain. It is well established that among people with chronic pain, women far outnumber men14. Also, in experimental settings, women tend to be more sensitive than men are to pain — induced, for instance, by the application of heat, cold or pressure.
Pain researchers have proposed various gender-based and sex-based explanations for these differences14, such as that women are more likely than men to go to the doctor, as shown by usage rates for health-care services. However, investigations in male and female mice have suggested that, at least in rodents, different mechanisms are responsible for the processing of persistent pain in females and males.
Why the sexes don’t feel pain the same way
A 2015 study in mice15, for example, and follow-up findings demonstrated that a well-studied mechanism for the processing of persistent pain — involving immune cells called microglia — operates only in male rodents. (It is well studied in males, at least.) In males, the microglia release a factor that causes neurons in the spinal cord to increase their firing, which sustains chronic pain. Although female mice have just as many microglia as male mice do, their microglia don’t seem to be involved in the pain circuit — or, if they are involved, it is in a more complicated way. In fact, in females, T cells might play a similar part to microglia in males.
Whether the microglial or T-cell mechanism for the processing of persistent pain is engaged in any one individual seems to be due to testosterone levels being above or below a certain threshold. This dimorphism suggests that different physiological mechanisms could contribute to some of the differences observed in men and women in relation to chronic pain.
Immune function. Numerous studies that involve comparing immune responses in female and male organisms — whether they are fruit flies, fish, lizards, birds or mammals — have shown that females often generate more robust immune responses to antigens than do their male counterparts16. This suggests that sex differences in immune function are evolutionarily conserved, perhaps because of a common need for female individuals to transfer immunity to the next generation (whether through breast milk or a yolk sac), or because of some other sex-specific selective pressure.
In humans, these immunological stimuli can be self-antigens (proteins made by our own cells), allergens, cancerous cells or pathogenic microbes. Because women have larger immune responses than men, they are more likely to develop autoimmune diseases and allergies, but less likely to be diagnosed with non-reproductive cancers, such as skin or colon cancer17, and certain infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis16 and COVID-1918.
Some studies suggest that women generate a greater immune response to certain vaccines than do men.Credit: Patrick Meinhardt/Bloomberg/Getty
The difference between female and male organisms in the amount of antibodies produced in response to immunological stimuli changes across the life course, being most robust during the reproductive years19. This could explain why females of reproductive age often generate more antibodies in response to vaccines and microbes than males do20, and why female antibody responses are more durable and cross-reactive against diverse variants, such as different strains of influenza virus.
Mouse models have shown that gonadal hormones contribute more to mammalian sex differences in vaccine-induced immunity than do genes linked to sex chromosomes, at least against influenza viruses21. In both mice and humans, concentrations of estradiol (a hormone that is typically produced at higher levels in female organisms) are positively associated with greater antibody responses to influenza vaccines22. In short, a wealth of insights about the benefits (and downsides) of a bolstered immune response have emerged only because researchers have compared immune responses in male and female organisms.
Mental health. Sex and gender differences in the prevalence of mental-health disorders in humans span the life course. Prepubescent boys are significantly more likely than prepubescent girls to be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder or attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder23. In their late teens or early 20s, men are more likely to be diagnosed with early-life schizophrenia. They are also more likely to experience a brain injury caused by a lack of oxygen at birth, and to have neurological conditions, such as Tourette’s syndrome. After puberty, however, disorders involving depression, anxiety, compulsion and obsession are more frequent in women23.
Sociocultural factors probably contribute to the differences in the prevalence of many of these conditions, including biases around the criteria used to diagnose early-life disorders by clinicians. Similarly, by the time a woman is diagnosed with a mood or affective disorder, she has often lived for decades in a gendered environment, making it hard for researchers to separate the effects of biology during development from those of life experience. Studies conducted over the past two decades in male and female rodents, however, have revealed an integral role for the immune system — specifically microglial cells — in affecting how testosterone acts on the brain and alters the structure and function of certain regions.
The fraught quest to account for sex in biology research
For instance, experiments measuring cellular activity in post-mortem animals have shown that during development, male rodents have a greater number of activated microglia in certain regions of their brains than do female rodents. These activated microglia release more of the signalling molecules that are crucial to forming synapses and controlling cell numbers. Many of the brain regions affected by the selective elimination of cells are also those implicated in mental-health disorders in humans (in both sexes) that originate during development24.
These findings could offer clues as to why messenger RNAs obtained from the cortex of human male fetuses indicate higher expression levels of genes involved in inflammation than do those obtained from human female fetuses. Post-mortem, higher levels of inflammation have even been found in the cortices of men who had been diagnosed with autism than in those of men who had not received a mental-health diagnosis25.
All of this suggests that, in mammals, greater activity of the neuroimmune system is somehow involved in the process of brain masculinization — which means that various mental-health disorders that affect boys more than girls could involve disruptions to immune-system processes.
Early days
Ultimately, we support efforts to interrogate both biological and social determinants of disease. Indeed, having more information is always preferable to having less. It is crucial to consider how biological factors linked to sex interact with each other and with other biological factors, such as age and genetic background, as well as with sociocultural or environmental influences. But whether the variables that have the most impact on physiology and disease are sex-based, gender-based or unrelated to either is a question that must be answered by research.
Sex and gender analysis improves science and engineering
Related to this, although there is always a danger of scientists and journalists oversimplifying things — particularly in relation to sex and gender — any rigorous analysis requires the consideration of averages as well as measures of variation. Just as with the importance of sex-related variables compared to other variables, it is an empirical question whether within-sex variation has more or less impact on a trait of interest than between-sex variation does.
When it comes to the threat of people misusing statements about an inherent difference between female and male individuals to rationalize continuing the historical subordination of women, transgender people and others, we agree that this danger is real and urgent. Since September 2023, for instance, health-care providers in Texas have been prohibited from giving gender-transition surgeries, puberty-blocking medication or hormone therapies to people under 18. This was decided on the basis of claims that everyone belongs to one of two groups, and that this reality is settled by science. The solution, however, is not to deny a priori the importance of sex differences, but rather to improve understanding of variation in human populations and how it relates to biological and social factors. Similarly, whereas we recognize the importance of studying intersex, non-binary, transgender and other individuals whose biology or life experiences are not encompassed by a simplistic binary, the neglect of such individuals should not be addressed by abandoning female–male comparisons.
Because female organisms have for so long been left out of investigations in many biomedical fields, researchers are still surprisingly ignorant of their fundamental biology across numerous taxa, and how it does or does not differ from that of males. There is also much room for improvement in research on sex differences — in terms of statistical and reporting practices26, researchers actually splitting their data by sex and analysing those data appropriately3, and journals improving their policies around sex and gender. The highly fruitful approach of comparing female and male organisms should not be abandoned just as investigators are starting to make progress.
Over the past decade, intense and polarizing debates about transgender rights and women’s bodies have escalated worldwide — from politicians being grilled on the definition of a woman to scientific journals being critiqued for the language they use in discussions of women’s health. Meanwhile, studies have accumulated showing that the impacts of sex and gender on human health and behaviour are both far-reaching and complex. This is in part the result of major funding agencies, such as the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the US National Institutes of Health, as well as various scientific journals1, developing guidelines and mandates to encourage scientists to consider sex and gender in their research (see Nature605, 396 (2022); Nature Commun. 13, 2845; 2022).
Given the heightened sociopolitical tensions and a widespread perception that considering sex and gender (terms we define below) will ramp up the complexity and costs of research, many scientists might feel it is prudent to avoid examining them in their work. However, studies that engage critically with sex and gender are urgently needed, both to increase understanding of humans across diverse contexts, and to provide insights for societal discussions — whether on health and disease, education or other topics.
Why it’s essential to study sex and gender, even as tensions rise
Clinicians and regulatory agencies still lack knowledge about how factors related to sex and gender, and their interactions, affect the likelihood of being prescribed a drug, of experiencing severe side effects or of receiving an incorrect dose2. Similarly, in relation to disaster relief, organizations providing aid to those in need could increase the effectiveness of their efforts if they better understood how sex and gender affect people’s ability to access health services, food or water — in the context of sexualized or gender-based violence, say, or because of gendered stereotypes and roles3. To make future products more useful to everyone, many engineering and design fields, from artificial intelligence to robotics, need sex- and gender-informed research. The design of commonly used products, such as seat belts and airbags, needs to take into account factors related to sex and gender to address women’s increased risk of injury and fatality in vehicle crashes4. We urge scientists to engage with the concepts and issues surrounding sex and gender, and to consider the relevance of them to their own field. We also entreat them to embrace complexity, and develop deeper, more-nuanced approaches to interrogating sex and gender than are most commonly used today. This means, among other things, engaging deeply with the mechanisms and factors that underlie apparent differences between groups5.
Causes of confusion
For most research that considers sex and/or gender, limited information is collected for either attribute. For studies involving humans, participants are typically asked to identify their sex and/or gender category; for those involving non-human animals, individuals are usually assigned to a sex category depending on the appearance of their genital anatomy.
Meanwhile, when it comes to promoting understanding of the concepts of sex and gender and the distinctions between them, a starting point frequently offered — including by major research funders — is that sex is biological and gender is social. In other words, sex is meant to refer to various anatomical and other biological features, whereas gender is associated with social and cultural attributes, opportunities and roles.
Splitting data by sex or gender category can be a useful starting point to help identify sex- and gender-related differences and disparities. Similarly, the ‘sex is biological and gender is social’ framing can offer a valuable initial toehold, because it serves as a reminder that not every difference observed between sex or gender groups is rooted in biology: social and environmental factors are often important, too.
Male–female comparisons are powerful in biomedical research — don’t abandon them
Ultimately, however, both the approaches commonly used to categorize individuals and the way in which many researchers think about sex and gender do not necessarily lead to studies that can adequately address the complexities and diversity of humans. They can even be misleading.
For a start, sex is not a fixed thing. Neither is gender.
For us, the term sex is best understood as both a categorization scheme (in which individuals are typically classed as male, female or intersex) and a complex constellation of traits and factors across several levels of biological organization that show considerable variability between and within individuals. Sex-related factors and traits include anatomical features, hormones, levels of gene expression and physiological, reproductive, metabolic or neurological processes — but no single trait comprehensively defines an individual’s sex. In all animals, including humans, developmental processes that occur during sexual differentiation (during fetal development and after birth) are not determined by single genes. Instead, sex phenotypes emerge from the complex interplay of numerous molecular pathways that can be influenced by environmental experiences through epigenetic, endocrine, neurological and other mechanisms across people’s lifespan6.
Similarly, the term gender encompasses much more than people’s sense of self as a gendered individual, or their ‘gender identity’. Gender can be understood as a categorization scheme, in which a person can identify as a man or woman (whether cisgender or trans), as non-binary or with one or more other evolving terms. Gender also encompasses roles, norms, relations and opportunities that vary between cultures and over time, and which affect people’s income, autonomy, domestic and public roles, and their access to power and resources.
Furthermore, sex and gender are not neatly separable.
Nature journals raise the bar on sex and gender reporting in research
Various studies have shown that environmental and social factors can affect people’s biology in numerous ways. Gendered dressing patterns affect people’s exposure to sunlight7, for instance, affecting their levels of vitamin D, which can in turn influence bone density8,9. In other words, although bone density is affected by levels of oestrogen or testosterone, it should not be understood as solely a sex-related trait, but as something that is shaped by social and environmental factors rooted in gender, too. Similarly, patterns of gendered socialization related to dress, types of play (for example, indoor or outdoor) and vigilance about cleanliness might result in boys and girls having distinct patterns of exposure to microorganisms — which could, in turn, have implications for the maturation of their immune system and susceptibility to developing conditions such as an allergy or autoimmune disorder10. Some scholars focusing on issues around sex and gender use the hybrid terms gender/sex or sex/gender in recognition of such entanglement11,12.
To add to the difficulties, many scientific organizations, journals and researchers fail to clarify what exactly they mean by sex and gender, or they conflate the terms or use them interchangeably. Moreover, patterns of use can differ according to people’s language, discipline or country. For example, the term gender medicine has been used to describe at least three distinct things: a branch of medicine focused on disease-related differences between men and women13; the study of how sex and gender influence an individual’s health14,15; and the provision of care for children with differences in sexual development16. To help address this confusion, we have mapped the relationships between various areas of science concerned with sex and gender, and policies linked to equity, diversity and inclusion17.
Embracing complexity
In our view, continued dialogue between scholars and journal editors will help to clarify and refine terminologies. However, putting aside the problems with how the terms are used and understood, when sex and gender are considered in research at all, the standard approach is to compare female and male individuals. Such comparisons can be useful for flagging characteristics that warrant further investigation. However, in making such comparisons, researchers often overlook the fact that there is substantial heterogeneity in sex/gender categories and substantial overlap between them for many traits. Ultimately, relying too heavily on a binary comparison approach risks describing the realities incorrectly for everyone, not just for women or non-binary people. It also contributes to the marginalization of those with variations in sexual development and people with diverse gender identities.
Take, for example, research on blood donation. In 2017, researchers in Canada published findings that among frequent blood donors, women had low levels of ferritin (a marker of iron levels) more often than did men18. The study prompted Canadian Blood Services — the organization that manages most of the country’s blood supply — to alter its policy on donation intervals: for all female donors, it has extended the time between donations from 8 to 12 weeks. (Since January 2023, Canadian Blood Services has also been intermittently testing ferritin levels in donors’ blood, but only in women.)
Gendered roles and behaviours affect people’s health and well-being.Credit: Diptendu Dutta/AFP/Getty
By focusing the policy on the sex category of the donor, the organization effectively treats all women as being at the same risk of low iron levels, which is higher than that of men, without attending to the specific factors that are most likely to be mechanistically related to that risk: body size, amount of menstrual blood loss and dietary iron intake. The change to donation interval for women — based on a binary analysis — also glosses over the heterogeneous and overlapping nature of the data, including the fact that the frequent donors also included women who did not have low iron levels, and men who did. A more nuanced interpretation of the findings, along with further research that probed the specific sex- and gender-related factors that increase people’s risk of developing low iron levels, could allow policies to be refined in ways that are better oriented to the mechanistic factors that matter most.
A spokesperson for Canadian Blood Services said that it recognizes that blood donors are a heterogeneous population and that it uses standardized, simple criteria to divide donors into accepted and deferred groups.
Accounting for sex and gender makes for better science
In practice, each investigator is best placed to work out which sex- and gender-related factors will be most important to assess on the basis of their study system, goals, tools, methods and resources19, and — crucially — best placed to justify these decisions. Not every possible variable relating to sex and gender needs to be interrogated in all contexts, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach.
Someone studying a new T-cell therapy for colon cancer, for example, might propose that gonadal hormones could modify the efficacy of the treatment, because T cells possess receptors for both oestrogens and androgens. If that researcher was conducting a study in people with colon cancer, they could evaluate whether correlations exist between the efficacy of the drug and serum concentrations of the relevant hormones (which can be affected by biological, social and environmental factors). If they were working with a mouse model of colon cancer, they might use antagonists or agonists of the relevant hormone receptors or give the animals hormone supplements. A different approach would be needed if the researcher was interested in whether the sex of the T-cell donor changes the efficacy of the treatment depending on the sex of the recipient.
These kinds of analysis could have resource implications: in some cases, different reagents, extra measurements or more animals or participants would be required. In our view, considerable resources should be invested in addressing long-standing gender inequities. Furthermore, researchers do not necessarily need to consider sex and gender in every experiment or study. More important is that they build sufficient skills and understanding to be able to consider the potential impacts of sex and gender and justify their research designs accordingly.
Implicit bias
In addition to considering sex and gender in their work and taking more-nuanced approaches to studying both, it is crucial that researchers explore how the influences of sex and/or gender shape their own research.
The fraught quest to account for sex in biology research
Many phenomena in diverse fields, including medicine, archaeology and history, show that science has never been insulated from social and cultural biases, or from stereotypes and mythologies about sex and gender. Funders and regulators are still trying to remedy the lack of inclusion or under-representation of women in clinical trials of drugs or devices. Such biases lead to common mislabelling such as ‘the male hormone testosterone’ or ‘the female X chromosome’ even though testosterone and X chromosomes are important for normal physiological function in all human bodies. Likewise, many studies assess the effects of androgens in only male participants, for instance, or analyse only women’s child-care responsibilities.
Truly understanding the impacts of sex and gender on human life will require a mix of transdisciplinary, quantitative, qualitative and intersectional analyses — which strive to assess how people’s experiences are shaped by interacting social processes, such as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism and colonialism.
Given the enormous untapped opportunities for developing insights concerning sex and gender across many contexts, it is essential that more scientists lean in with courage and creativity to interrogate the fascinating complexity of sex- and gender-related impacts — to the benefit of all.
Apple has poached dozens of artificial intelligence experts from Google and created a “secretive European laboratory” in Zurich to house a new team of staff tasked with building new AI models and products, according to a paywalled Financial Times report.
Based on an analysis of LinkedIn profiles conducted by FT, Apple has recruited at least 36 specialists from Google since 2018, when it poached John Giannandrea to be its top AI executive.
Apple’s main AI team works out of California and Seattle, but the company has recently expanded offices dedicated to AI work in Zurich, Switzerland. Apple’s acquisition of local AI startups FaceShift (VR) and Fashwell (image recognition) is believed to have influenced its decision to build a secretive research lab known as “Vision Lab” in the city.
According to the report, employees based in the lab have been involved in Apple’s research into the underlying technology that powers OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot and similar products based on large language models (LLMs). The focus has been on designing more advanced AI models that incorporate text and visual inputs to produce responses to queries.
The report suggests that Apple’s recent work on LLMs is a natural outgrowth of the company’s work on Siri over the last decade:
The company has long been aware of the potential of “neural networks” — a form of AI inspired by the way neurons interact in the human brain and a technology that underpins breakthrough products such as ChatGPT.
Chuck Wooters, an expert in conversational AI and LLMs who joined Apple in December 2013 and worked on Siri for almost two years, said: “During the time that I was there, one of the pushes that was happening in the Siri group was to move to a neural architecture for speech recognition. Even back then, before large language models took off, they were huge advocates of neural networks.”
Currently, Apple’s leading AI group includes notable ex-Google personnel such as Giannandrea, former head of Google Brain, which is now part of DeepMind. Samy Bengio, now senior director of AI and ML research at Apple, was also previously a leading AI scientist at Google. The same goes for Ruoming Pang, who directs Apple’s “Foundation Models” team focusing on large language models. Pang previously headed AI speech recognition research at Google.
In 2016, Apple acquired Perceptual Machines, a company that worked on generative AI-powered image, detection, founded by Ruslan Salakhutdinov from Carnegie Mellon University. Salakhutdinov is said to be a key figure in the history of neural networks, and studied at the University of Toronto under the “godfather” of the technology, Geoffrey Hinton, who left Google last year citing concerns about the dangers of generative AI.
Salakhutdinov told FT that one reason for Apple’s slow AI rollout was the tendency of language models to provide incorrect or problematic answers: “I think they are just being a little bit more cautious because they can’t release something they can’t fully control,” he said.
A first look at the AI features that Apple has planned should come in just over a month, with iOS 18 set to debut at the Worldwide Developers Conference that kicks off on June 10.
RedacTek’s tool alerts users to PubPeer discussions, and indicates when a study, or the papers that it cites, has been retracted.Credit: deepblue4you/Getty
A free online tool released earlier this month alerts researchers when a paper cites studies that are mentioned on the website PubPeer, a forum scientists often use to raise integrity concerns surrounding published papers.
Studies are usually flagged on PubPeer when readers have suspicions, for example about image manipulation, plagiarism, data fabrication or artificial intelligence (AI)-generated text. PubPeer already offers its own browser plug-in that alerts users when a study that they are reading has been posted on the site. The new tool, a plug-in released on 13 April by RedacTek, based in Oakland, California, goes further — it searches through reference lists for papers that have been flagged. The software pulls information from many sources, including PubPeer’s database; data from the digital-infrastructure organization Crossref, which assigns digital object identifiers to articles; and OpenAlex, a free index of hundreds of millions of scientific documents.
It’s important to track mentions of referenced articles on PubPeer, says Jodi Schneider, an information scientist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, who has tried out the RedacTek plug-in. “Not every single reference that’s in the bibliography matters, but some of them do,” she adds. “When you see a large number of problems in somebody’s bibliography, that just calls everything into question.”
The aim of the tool is to flag potential problems with studies to researchers early on, to reduce the circulation of poor-quality science, says RedacTek founder Rick Meyler, based in Emeryville, California. Future versions might also use AI to automatically clarify whether the PubPeer comments on a paper are positive or negative, he adds.
Third-generation retractions
As well as flagging PubPeer discussions, the plug-in indicates when a study, or the papers that it cites, has been retracted. There are existing tools that alert academics about retracted citations; some can do this during the writing process, so that researchers are aware of the publication status of studies when constructing bibliographies. But with the new tool, users can opt in to receive notifications about further ‘generations’ of retractions — alerts cover not only the study that they are reading, but also the papers it cites, articles cited by those references and even papers cited by the secondary references.
The software also calculates a ‘retraction association value’ for studies, a metric that measures the extent to which the paper is associated with science that has been withdrawn from the literature. As well as informing individual researchers, the plug-in could help scholarly publishers to keep tabs on their own journals, Meyler says, because it allows users to filter by publication.
In its ‘paper scorecard’, the tool also flags any papers in the three generations of referenced studies in which more than 25% of papers in the bibliography are self-citations — references by authors to their previous works.
Future versions could highlight whether papers cited retracted studies before or after the retraction was issued, notes Meyler, or whether mentions of such studies acknowledge the retraction. That would be useful, says Schneider, who co-authored a 2020 analysis that found that as little as 4% of citations to retracted studies note that the referenced paper has been retracted1.
Meyler says that RedacTek is currently in talks with scholarly-services firm Cabell’s International in Beaumont, Texas, which maintains pay-to-view lists of suspected predatory journals, which publish articles without proper quality checks for issues such as plagiarism but still collect authors’ fees. The plan is to use these lists to improve the tool so that it can also automatically flag any cited papers that are published in such journals.
A NATO research vessel conducting studies of marine mammals in the Mediterranean Sea (pictured in 2009).Credit: U.S. Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Kristen Allen via Mil image/Alamy
Science has been essential to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the political and military alliance founded 75 years ago this month. The 32-country alliance is admitting more members as it faces evolving geopolitical and military threats. The organization’s scientific work focuses largely on defence and civil-security projects that, for instance, investigate how climate change is affecting war, how emerging technologies could enhance soldiers’ performance and how to reduce discrimination and intolerance among military personnel. “The role of science and technology for NATO is likely to grow significantly over the next two decades,” predicts Simona Soare, a defence-technologies researcher at Lancaster University, UK.
How does NATO use science?
“We’re looking to make sure that we can provide scientific advice to the nations of NATO to enable them to maintain a technical and military advantage,” says Bryan Wells, a chemist and the organization’s chief scientist. Wells works at NATO’s Brussels headquarters, where world leaders gathered earlier this month to mark the organization’s 75th anniversary.
NATO has a complex organizational structure including both military and civilian staff. The civilian part of NATO is headed by a senior political figure from a member state and also includes diplomats representing member countries. The military part is headed by senior military personnel.
Much of NATO’s research and development (R&D) takes place through the Science and Technology Organization (STO), a network of more than 6,000 scientists at universities and national laboratories and in industry. They work together on defence research projects. NATO’s member states and non-member countries together contribute around €350 million (US$380 million) annually for the work of this network, says Wells.
The STO also has its own research laboratory, the Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE) in La Spezia, Italy. The laboratory employs around 150 people and is led by Eric Pouliquen, a physicist who has worked on underwater remote sensing.
NATO’s civilian arm provides grants for a Science for Peace and Security (SPS) research programme, headed by Claudio Palestini, a researcher in communications engineering.
The programme funds studies in areas such as counterterrorism and cyber defence. Earlier this month, the SPS programme updated its priorities. These now include studies on the impact on defence and security from climate change and from AI; protecting underwater infrastructure, and what it calls “hybrid threats”, which includes interference in elections and disinformation. Each of its larger grants is worth between €250,000 and €400,000 and lasts for two to three years.
Wells says the STO publishes research — mostly from the CMRE — in peer-reviewed journals where possible. “We recognize if we can publish openly, it’s very beneficial to do that,” he says.
However, many of its research projects are classified. NATO also does not publish a detailed breakdown of its R&D income and expenditure by country; nor does it release its funding trend data.
What sort of research is NATO doing?
Projects cover a spectrum of fields including using autonomous undersea surveillance to hunt for and identify mines; tracking and identifying submarines; quantum radar; and synthetic biology.
NATO is concerned that climate change has significant impacts on security. Melting sea ice creates more routes for naval shipping in the Arctic, for example, and NATO and non-NATO countries are increasingly operating in the region.
NATO is also interested in how temperature changes could affect the security of its member and non-member countries as well as of military installations around the world. In a 2024 review paper in the Texas National Security Review, CMRE researchers — along with colleagues from the University of St Andrews, UK, the University of L’Aquila, Italy, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich — found that submarines could become more difficult to detect using sonar in the North Atlantic Ocean as water temperature rises.
In another study, presented at last week’s conference of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna , CMRE researchers working with scientists at the universities of Princeton in New Jersey and Central Florida in Orlando assessed how extreme weather might affect 91 NATO military bases and installations. The researchers found that multiple bases and installations are likely to become susceptible to climate change as emissions continue to rise.
In another project, last year one of NATO’s research vessels moored vertical lines holding oceanographic and acoustic recorders in the Arctic Ocean. The intention was to monitor temperature, salinity and ambient noise throughout the water column. Other research projects are looking at the use of new materials for military clothing in warmer climates, says Wells.
In 2022, NATO also published the first of a series called Climate change and Security Impact Assessment. It is also developing a methodology to map greenhouse-gas emissions from NATO-member military activities and installations.
Personnel from NATO and the Royal Jordanian Navy lower an unmanned undersea vehicle into the Gulf of Aqaba (pictured in 2022).Credit: U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Dawson Roth
How has NATO’s expansion affected science?
NATO’s membership has more than doubled since its founding on 4 April 1949. Finland and Sweden are the latest countries to join. Three more — Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia and Ukraine — want to become members.
More members potentially means more funding and support for research and development, as well as access to a bigger pool of scientific expertise. However, Finland and Sweden both participated in NATO’s collaborative research for several years before they joined, says Wells.
Soare says that NATO’s defence science originally focused on aerospace, to help its members catch up after the Soviet Union launched Earth’s first artificial satellites — Sputnik 1 and Sputnik 2 — in 1957. “Throughout the cold war, ensuring air superiority was considered crucial,” she says.
What about a role for science in diplomacy?
In 1958, NATO established research fellowships and projects in what later became its Science for Peace and Security programme, to boost collaboration between nations including the United States and the Soviet Union. “Science provided a path for superpower adversaries to cooperate,” says Paul Arthur Berkman, founder of the Science Diplomacy Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts.
The fellowships and collaborative projects continued to provide a point of contact between NATO and Russia until 2014, when Russia invaded Crimea. That year, Russia, Romania and the United States were jointly developing a system to connect telemedicine capabilities across all three countries to provide medical care in remote and emergency situations. However, the invasion prompted NATO to freeze cooperation with Russia.
Berkman, who in 2010 co-organized and chaired the first dialogue between NATO and Russia regarding environmental security in the Arctic, is concerned at the alliance’s shift away from using science as a “safety valve” in its relations with Russia. He warns that cutting off scientific dialogue with Russia undermines democracy and nations’ ability to tackle global challenges such as climate change.
“Open science is akin to freedom of speech. If we turn off open science, in a sense we’re undermining democracy,” says Berkman.
Hulda Jónsdóttir wears inflatable protective suits like these to study lethal viruses.Credit: Spiez Laboratory
Virologist Hulda Jónsdóttir studies some of the world’s most pathogenic viruses at the Spiez Laboratory in Spiez, Switzerland. For her, highly pathogenic viruses are more often a source of curiosity than of concern. Jónsdóttir, who runs a research group at the Spiez Laboratory, regularly dons a giant, inflatable protective suit to research disinfectants and antiviral compounds to combat several lethal viruses, including Ebola virus and Lassa virus. Jónsdóttir spoke to Nature about carving her own path in virology research and why she chose to pursue a career in Switzerland and at the Spiez Laboratory, which is owned and funded by the Swiss government.
Why do you study lethal viruses?
I’ve always been fascinated by viruses. They comprise barely anything, yet they have such a big impact on living organisms. Most of the viruses my lab and I study are highly pathogenic and lethal, such as Ebola virus, Lassa virus, Nairovirus and Nipah virus. Because these are all so lethal and don’t have vaccines or cures, they’re considered biosafety level (BSL) four. I have to wear a big inflated suit that’s attached to an air supply outside the room when I conduct my experiments.
What are you working on now?
My colleagues and I just started a three-year project to develop a model for testing antivirals against Nipah viruses, which are respiratory viruses that cause encephalitis. I also do disinfection studies for highly pathogenic viruses. Right now, we are looking at how effective homemade soap is as a disinfectant for Lassa virus, which is endemic in Nigeria as well as some other countries in West Africa.
What led you to your position at the Spiez Laboratory?
After I finished my PhD in virology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich in 2016, I stayed in the lab for a year as a postdoctoral researcher. By that point, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to stay in science. Then I saw an advertisement for a two-year postdoctoral placement in respiratory toxicology at the University of Bern. I thought that the experience would help me determine whether I was tired of science as a whole or just feeling disillusioned with my current environment because I had been there for so long. There, I realized that I still liked doing science and that I missed virology research.
Two years later, I saw a postdoctoral job at the Spiez Laboratory to study an experimental Ebola vaccine. The project required BSL-4 work, which was something I had dreamt of doing since I started working in respiratory virology. I decided to apply for the position. It’s been five years, and I’m still here.
How does the Spiez Laboratory differ from academic labs?
We’re a government institution, and part of the Swiss Federal Office of Civil Protection. In the biology department, we have governmental mandates to do research that is relevant to Swiss civil protection, although of course we can focus on other topics as well. I do a lot of applied research that benefits the public, such as trying to find antiviral drugs against infectious diseases. We also collaborate with the military by training soldiers for biological civil protection twice a year. During the COVID-19 pandemic, soldiers helped personnel from the Spiez Lab to run diagnostic tests for COVID-19.
Nature Spotlight: Switzerland
Along with research, we run a regular diagnostic service for hospitals and doctors who send samples to us to be tested. Unlike an academic lab, you need security clearance to work here.
How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect your research?
I started working on coronaviruses during my PhD, so I had a lot of experience with them by the time the pandemic hit. I was doing my BSL-4 training at the Spiez Laboratory when I first heard about COVID-19. At the time, I felt frustrated because I was progressing in my career and then got pulled back into coronavirus research. But I had to figure out how to research SARS-CoV-2 or my lab would have been shut down. By the middle of 2020, I was constantly being contacted by researchers to do antiviral drug tests, and by the military to do serological tests of soldiers. My colleagues and I analysed soldiers’ responses to the virus and estimated the percentage of asymptomatic people. Doing COVID-19 research was very chaotic for a while; everybody wanted results immediately. But in a way, I was grateful that I could still go to work, even if it was crazy busy. As a foreigner, I was far away from my family, so it was difficult being so isolated.
Why did you decide to stay in Switzerland?
I grew up in Iceland and always wanted to study abroad. I came to Switzerland 12 years ago and was planning on staying only for my PhD. But I kept ending up in good places with good people where I felt supported and inspired.
As superficial as it sounds, it’s also about the money. Switzerland invests a decent amount of money in science, and I’ve been fortunate to be part of projects that are already funded or easy to get funding for.
But I don’t think people always talk about how hard it is to move to a new country. When I first arrived in St Gallen, Switzerland, in 2012, I felt isolated because I didn’t know the language and had a hard time making friends. In January 2014, I moved to Bern, which was much better because there were more people around and I liked the city. I also joined an English-speaking theatre group called the Caretakers. I met a lot of people, some of whom are now my best friends. One big issue when you go abroad to do science is that a lot of your peers leave after their contracts end, so your friends become scattered around the world. My theatre group has been more constant; it’s been a lifesaver for me.
Any advice for early-career scientists?
It’s important to rest sufficiently if you want to do good research. The system is geared towards you working as much as possible, but you just end up burning out. If there’s anything I can recommend, it’s having more holiday time. In Switzerland, I have five weeks of holidays, four of which are legally mandated. But I recognize that I’m immensely privileged to be able to take so much time off. It’s not always possible, depending on someone’s financial situation, lab environment or the country they live in.
Academic culture often puts so much pressure on PhD students and postdocs that it squeezes them until there’s nothing left, which is something I’m heavily against. As a group of researchers, I think we should work towards changing that culture, in part by lobbying for more time off. As an individual, even if you can’t travel or take large chunks of time away from the lab, you can still put some distance between yourself and your job. For instance, if you’re working from home on a Friday, close your computer at five and put it in a different room. Just having a little bit of space helps you to work better.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
This article is part of Nature Spotlight: Switzerland, an editorially independent supplement. Advertisers have no influence over the content.
Policymakers often work behind closed doors — but the documents they produce offer clues about the research that influences them.Credit: Stefan Rousseau/Getty
When David Autor co-wrote a paper on how computerization affects job skill demands more than 20 years ago, a journal took 18 months to consider it — only to reject it after review. He went on to submit it to The Quarterly Journal of Economics, which eventually published the work1 in November 2003.
Autor’s paper is now the third most cited in policy documents worldwide, according to an analysis of data provided exclusively to Nature. It has accumulated around 1,100 citations in policy documents, show figures from the London-based firm Overton (see ‘The most-cited papers in policy’), which maintains a database of more than 12 million policy documents, think-tank papers, white papers and guidelines.
“I thought it was destined to be quite an obscure paper,” recalls Autor, a public-policy scholar and economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. “I’m excited that a lot of people are citing it.”
The top ten most cited papers in policy documents are dominated by economics research. When economics studies are excluded, a 1997 Nature paper2 about Earth’s ecosystem services and natural capital is second on the list, with more than 900 policy citations. The paper has also garnered more than 32,000 references from other studies, according to Google Scholar. Other highly cited non-economics studies include works on planetary boundaries, sustainable foods and the future of employment (see ‘Most-cited papers — excluding economics research’).
These lists provide insight into the types of research that politicians pay attention to, but policy citations don’t necessarily imply impact or influence, and Overton’s database has a bias towards documents published in English.
Interdisciplinary impact
Overton usually charges a licence fee to access its citation data. But last year, the firm worked with the London-based publisher Sage to release a free web-based tool that allows any researcher to find out how many times policy documents have cited their papers or mention their names. Overton and Sage said they created the tool, called Sage Policy Profiles, to help researchers to demonstrate the impact or influence their work might be having on policy. This can be useful for researchers during promotion or tenure interviews and in grant applications.
Autor thinks his study stands out because his paper was different from what other economists were writing at the time. It suggested that ‘middle-skill’ work, typically done in offices or factories by people who haven’t attended university, was going to be largely automated, leaving workers with either highly skilled jobs or manual work. “It has stood the test of time,” he says, “and it got people to focus on what I think is the right problem.” That topic is just as relevant today, Autor says, especially with the rise of artificial intelligence.
Walter Willett, an epidemiologist and food scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, thinks that interdisciplinary teams are most likely to gain a lot of policy citations. He co-authored a paper on the list of most cited non-economics studies: a 2019 work3 that was part of a Lancet commission to investigate how to feed the global population a healthy and environmentally sustainable diet by 2050 and has accumulated more than 600 policy citations.
“I think it had an impact because it was clearly a multidisciplinary effort,” says Willett. The work was co-authored by 37 scientists from 17 countries. The team included researchers from disciplines including food science, health metrics, climate change, ecology and evolution and bioethics. “None of us could have done this on our own. It really did require working with people outside our fields.”
Sverker Sörlin, an environmental historian at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, agrees that papers with a diverse set of authors often attract more policy citations. “It’s the combined effect that is often the key to getting more influence,” he says.
Has your research influenced policy? Use this free tool to check
Sörlin co-authored two papers in the list of top ten non-economics papers. One of those is a 2015 Science paper4 on planetary boundaries — a concept defining the environmental limits in which humanity can develop and thrive — which has attracted more than 750 policy citations. Sörlin thinks one reason it has been popular is that it’s a sequel to a 2009 Nature paper5 he co-authored on the same topic, which has been cited by policy documents 575 times.
Although policy citations don’t necessarily imply influence, Willett has seen evidence that his paper is prompting changes in policy. He points to Denmark as an example, noting that the nation is reformatting its dietary guidelines in line with the study’s recommendations. “I certainly can’t say that this document is the only thing that’s changing their guidelines,” he says. But “this gave it the support and credibility that allowed them to go forward”.
Broad brush
Peter Gluckman, who was the chief science adviser to the prime minister of New Zealand between 2009 and 2018, is not surprised by the lists. He expects policymakers to refer to broad-brush papers rather than those reporting on incremental advances in a field.
Gluckman, a paediatrician and biomedical scientist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, notes that it’s important to consider the context in which papers are being cited, because studies reporting controversial findings sometimes attract many citations. He also warns that the list is probably not comprehensive: many policy papers are not easily accessible to tools such as Overton, which uses text mining to compile data, and so will not be included in the database.
The top 100 papers
“The thing that worries me most is the age of the papers that are involved,” Gluckman says. “Does that tell us something about just the way the analysis is done or that relatively few papers get heavily used in policymaking?”
Gluckman says it’s strange that some recent work on climate change, food security, social cohesion and similar areas hasn’t made it to the non-economics list. “Maybe it’s just because they’re not being referred to,” he says, or perhaps that work is cited, in turn, in the broad-scope papers that are most heavily referenced in policy documents.
As for Sage Policy Profiles, Gluckman says it’s always useful to get an idea of which studies are attracting attention from policymakers, but he notes that studies often take years to influence policy. “Yet the average academic is trying to make a claim here and now that their current work is having an impact,” he adds. “So there’s a disconnect there.”
Willett thinks policy citations are probably more important than scholarly citations in other papers. “In the end, we don’t want this to just sit on an academic shelf.”
In Unrooted, botanist Erin Zimmerman shares her struggle to balance research and family.Credit: Kenneth Wurdack
Unrooted: Botany, Motherhood, and the Fight to Save An Old ScienceErin Zimmerman Melville House (2024)
Nineteenth-century English suffragist Lydia Ernestine Becker, a lifelong advocate for women’s right to vote, was also an accomplished botanist who discovered a peculiar hermaphrodite flower. She found that the female flowers of red campion, Lychnis diurna (now called Silene dioica), develop stamens — the pollen-producing male part of a flower — when infected with a fungus. She expounded on these ‘curious characteristics’ in correspondence with Charles Darwin, and published a paper on her findings in 1869 (L. Becker J. Bot.7, 291–292; 1869).
“Becker’s research led her to consider that the seemingly fixed categories of male and female might not be as immutable as they first seemed,” notes evolutionary biologist Erin Zimmerman in her moving memoir of botany and motherhood, Unrooted. Becker concluded that girls and women were lagging behind only because they received less education than boys and men. Her ideas caused a backlash, and she was ridiculed by press critics — some even implied that she was a hermaphrodite herself.
Uncertainties in science and in life
In some ways, Becker’s story foreshadows that of Zimmerman. Women in science still struggle to succeed in academia in the face of ingrained sexism. In her book, Zimmerman describes her determination to pursue a career in her beloved field of botany. She travels from Montreal, Canada, to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in London, and then to the Guyanese rainforest, in search of a group of tropical trees and shrubs known as Dialiinae (now called Dialioideae) — one of the earliest evolutionary branches of the legume family. In Guyana, she encounters an enormous anaconda and a terrier-size spotted rodent called a labba (Cuniculus paca). She climbs part-way up 60-metre-tall trees, battling her dread of falling as well as angry insects.
Perhaps Zimmerman’s most powerful fear, however, the difficulty of combining her career with motherhood. She tells her boyfriend Eric that she would “certainly not be having children”, and her concerns over parenthood are not unfounded. In the United States, 43% of women with full-time jobs in science leave the sector or take on part-time roles after having their first child (E. A. Cech and M. Blair-Loy Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA116, 4182–4187; 2019). By contrast, only 23% of new fathers leave or reduce their hours.
The author experiences this herself, and she finds parallels between the obstacles faced by women in science and global threats to plants. According to the 2023 State of the World’s Plants and Fungi report (see go.nature.com/3xardd7), 45% of all known flowering plant species are at risk of extinction — a percentage eerily similar to that of women leaving full-time research.
Zimmerman’s botanical sketches, such as this one of Monstera deliciosa, dot the book.Credit: Melville House Publishing
Zimmerman’s field is hardly secure: her PhD project involved carefully dissecting decades-old, dried plant specimens stored in herbaria and extracting DNA from the samples. These collections are important for assessing extinction risks, yet they are themselves under threat. “Old and venerable collections housing many priceless specimens look to some funding bodies like dusty old money pits,” she writes. In February, Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, announced the closure of its 100-year-old herbarium, which houses 825,000 specimens, saying that the collection had become “too expensive to maintain” (see go.nature.com/4cnbyjm).
Nevertheless, Zimmerman persisted. Her plants had become beloved children, absorbing her attention. Lists of specialized terms such as leaf shapes “read like an arcane spell book”: “Ovate. Lanceolate. Cordate. Falcate. Orbicular. Cuneate.” She draws plant specimens in meticulous detail, and these lovely illustrations dot the pages of her book.
But her devotion to her research becomes an obsession, isolating her. And as she plots her path, she realizes how tenuous her dream of tenure is: there are too few faculty positions.
A different future
Despite the pressures, Zimmerman manages to maintain a life outside the laboratory: soon after her doctoral defence — a moment she has dreamed of for years — she and Eric marry in the barn of her childhood home in Ontario. One month later, she discovers she is pregnant. In the middle of her pregnancy, she lands a postdoc position at a Canadian government agricultural facility.
How centuries of sexism excluded women from science — and how to redress the balance
This is where her personal and professional lives collide. Overworked, in pain, accused of having ‘brain fog’, dismissed for her concerns about working in a pesticide-sprayed greenhouse while pregnant and, later, longing for her infant daughter, Zimmerman decides to quit. Her supervisor’s reaction is appalling: “‘I’m never going to hire a pregnant woman, or one who’s going to get pregnant, again,’ he spat. ‘You were a terrible investment’.”
This moment of misogyny leads Zimmerman to reconsider the landscape of science. Women are often derided for their reproductive choices, yet men have children, too. The highly praised Darwin, for example, had ten children with his cousin, Emma Wedgwood. Men who have become scientific heroes often dedicated all their waking hours to their research, while women — including their wives or, in the case of wealthy men, nannies — raised their children.
To slow “the haemorrhage of women” from the hyper-competitive world of research, we need better policies, Zimmerman writes. These should include protected parental leave, flexibility for new mothers to work from home, designated breast-pumping spaces (rather than the mildewed shower stall Zimmerman was forced to use) and childcare facilities at conferences, so that women don’t miss out on networking and hiring opportunities.
After departing from research, Zimmerman switched to science journalism, for which we should be grateful, for she writes beautifully. In some ways, her decision echoes Becker’s, who published her 1864 book Botany for Novices under just her initials (L.E.B.) and then left the field to dedicate herself to women’s activism. Now, 160 years later, Zimmerman can tell her story, under her full name. That’s progress.
Podcasts and radio appearance can disseminate your science and raise your profile.Credit: Mixetto/Getty
Eighteen months ago, I had zero media experience. I’m a physical-activity researcher in the school of Allied Health and Human Performance at the University of South Australia in Adelaide. In the three years since completing my PhD, I hadn’t written articles for anyone outside my scientific community, courted mentions in a newspaper or even thought about speaking on the radio or on podcasts. I was content to spend my days head-down in research, analysing data and aiming to publish papers. Media publicity was nowhere on my radar.
At the start of 2023, along with my colleagues, I published a major systematic review in the British Journal of Sports Medicine1 that summarized much of the research on how exercise can help to reduce depression and anxiety. It was unusual for two main reasons. First, we synthesized all the evidence in the field, which involved collating the results of nearly 100 systematic reviews. Second, we analysed the most effective exercise types, along with varying intensities and durations of exercise and the effects across diverse clinical and non-clinical populations.
How to work with your institution’s press office to maximize the reach of your work
We found overwhelming evidence that exercise improves mental health across numerous healthy and clinical populations. Higher-intensity physical activity was linked to more substantial improvements in symptoms, but the effectiveness of interventions decreased with longer programmes of training.
The findings stuck a chord with many people, so the review ended up getting a lot of attention. I received requests from around the world to do radio interviews and go on podcasts. I was also invited to give talks and presentations in-person across Australia and virtually for international events.
Researchers should court media attention responsibly, with the ultimate goal of informing the public about scientific breakthroughs. But I’ve found that it can also raise your personal profile and advance your career.
Spreading the message
Over the past year, my media exposure has continued, with my research being featured in outlets including The Wall Street Journal, CNN, the Daily Mail, Yahoo, Times Higher Education, Cosmos magazine, Medical News Today and Science Daily. This has opened up unexpected opportunities. It has resulted in researchers from around Australia reaching out to me to collaborate on further reviews and meta-analyses on topics related to physical activity and lifestyle behaviours, allowing me to expand my research into different domains.
Collection: Science communication
My media exposure has also led to industry collaborations. One Australian start-up company, which runs an app that aims to help office workers to exercise, reached out and provided funding for me to evaluate the effectiveness of their tool. The results are being prepared for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. The opportunity not only enabled valuable research examining an intervention in a real-world setting, but also laid the groundwork for potential collaborations with industry partners.
Furthermore, media exposure has helped me to develop valuable transferable skills. I had to hone my presentation skills to prepare simplified explanations of my research and communicate across fields. Giving media interviews enhanced my skills in translating complex findings into everyday terms, using relatable analogies, being concise and staying composed under pressure. These have all proved invaluable for me in research, public speaking and collaborations beyond academia.
Ben Singh learnt valuable skills through media exposure.Credit: Ben Singh
Although the media interest was serendipitous at first, I’ve learnt to be pro-active in boosting media engagement. I now pitch my published papers to relevant journalists and outlets, highlighting what’s new, useful and surprising about my research.
I also regularly write for the website The Conversation to practise communicating research to broad audiences accessibly. I use social media to showcase my work, build authority in my field, share updates, promote publications and connect with peers and the public. And I’ve attended media training offered by my institution, learning skills such as: crafting compelling narratives and soundbites; developing an engaging presentation style; preparing for different interview formats; and translating complex concepts into useful and easily understood analogies.
Prepare to push back
Not all media interactions are perfect. I’ve encountered overly simplified coverage, misinterpretation of my work and pressured timelines. For instance, in the discussion section of our review in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, we compared our findings with those from past reviews on how medications affect depression. On average, our results showed that exercise was 1.5 times better than medication at improving symptoms of depression, in terms of effect sizes. This comparison was not the main purpose of our review, but several media outlets portrayed our study as a head-to-head analysis pitting exercise against medication. This oversimplifies the complexity of treatment options and leads to misconceptions about the role of exercise in comprehensive mental health care. The comparison failed to account for the interplay of various factors and individual differences, and could lead people to make inappropriate generalized decisions about their treatment without consulting medical professionals.
How to get media coverage and boost your science’s impact
To prevent this kind of misrepresentation, I learnt to articulate the actual objectives and limitations clearly up front during interviews, conferences and seminars. I also realized that I needed to be prepared to correct any inaccurate portrayals rapidly by providing proper context and caveats.
The potential rewards have made proactively seeking media opportunities worthwhile, even if it felt daunting at first. Rather than leaving it to chance, I’ve been strategic in promoting my own research through media engagement as an early-career academic. The visibility, credibility and skills I have gained have amplified my findings and fuelled my career advancement. I’m glad I stepped out of my comfort zone to embrace media exposure.
This is an article from the Nature Careers Community, a place for Nature readers to share their professional experiences and advice. Guest posts are encouraged.
