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Science journal to review submissions for ‘potential harm’ after outrage over female mentorship paper

An academic journal is giving potential veto power over submitted papers to “groups concerned by the findings,” following outrage over a published paper that concluded male mentors are better for female scientists.

Nature Communications revised its internal guidelines last week to consider “the dimension of potential harm” that a paper can inflict on concerned groups.

It also announced that the three authors – two of whom are female – had retracted the mentorship paper because its “conclusions in their current form do not stand.”

The about-face by the journal, a sister publication to the better-known Nature, spawned another wave of criticism from academics who claimed the changes would have a chilling effect on research, particularly from certain parts of the world.

“Apparently a woman lead author isn’t sufficient in this case to speak to the implications of the paper?” tweeted Nicole Barbaro, a research scientist at Western Governors University Labs.

Barbaro added that she was not sure how the new policy guidelines could be “applied fairly,” since any paper “can find someone who disagrees with it.”