{"id":486,"date":"2019-12-20T13:56:57","date_gmt":"2019-12-20T18:56:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/reproduction-a-female-perspective\/?p=486"},"modified":"2019-12-20T14:02:15","modified_gmt":"2019-12-20T19:02:15","slug":"why-sexist-bias-in-natural-history-museums-really-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/reproduction-a-female-perspective\/2019\/12\/20\/why-sexist-bias-in-natural-history-museums-really-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"Why sexist bias in natural history museums really matters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><u><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-487\" src=\"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/reproduction-a-female-perspective\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/481\/2019\/12\/guardian-logo.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"374\" height=\"259\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/reproduction-a-female-perspective\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/481\/2019\/12\/guardian-logo.png 1440w, https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/reproduction-a-female-perspective\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/481\/2019\/12\/guardian-logo-300x208.png 300w, https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/reproduction-a-female-perspective\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/481\/2019\/12\/guardian-logo-768x532.png 768w, https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/reproduction-a-female-perspective\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/481\/2019\/12\/guardian-logo-1024x709.png 1024w, https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/reproduction-a-female-perspective\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/481\/2019\/12\/guardian-logo-433x300.png 433w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 374px) 100vw, 374px\" \/><\/u><\/p>\n<p>Amy Fleming in the Guardian (23 Oct 2019) reported on a study of sex bias in natural history collections by Dr Natalie Cooper\u00a0from the Natural History Museum in London (NHM).\u00a0 Dr Cooper&#8217;s group investigated sex rations in over 2 million bird and mammal specimens from the NHM, the American Museum of Natural History, the Field Museum of Natural History, the Museum National d&#8217;Histoire Naturelle, and the National Museum of Natural Historu (Smithsonian Institution) and found a bias towards males.\u00a0 The bias was stronger in type specimens than in the overall collections.\u00a0 More importantly, Cooper&#8217;s paper outlines how such sex bias in museum collections may influence the outcome of research in taxonomy, genomics, comparative anatomy, parisitology, stable isotope ecology, toxicology, and morphological evolution.<\/p>\n<p>For Fleming&#8217;s report see: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/science\/shortcuts\/2019\/oct\/23\/bad-science-sexist-bias-natural-history-museums-specimens?CMP=share_btn_link\">https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/science\/shortcuts\/2019\/oct\/23\/bad-science-sexist-bias-natural-history-museums-specimens?CMP=share_btn_link<\/a><\/p>\n<p>For the NHM report see: https:\/\/www.nhm.ac.uk\/discover\/news\/2019\/october\/more-male-than-female-specimens-in-natural-history-collections.html<\/p>\n<p>Cooper et al. 2019 Proceedings of the Royal Society B [https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1098\/rspb.2019.2025]<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Amy Fleming in the Guardian (23 Oct 2019) reported on a study of sex bias in natural history collections by Dr Natalie Cooper\u00a0from the Natural History Museum in London (NHM).\u00a0 Dr Cooper&#8217;s group investigated sex rations in over 2 million bird and mammal specimens from the NHM, the American Museum of Natural History, the Field&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/reproduction-a-female-perspective\/2019\/12\/20\/why-sexist-bias-in-natural-history-museums-really-matter\/\">Read More <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Why sexist bias in natural history museums really matters<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2750,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/reproduction-a-female-perspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/reproduction-a-female-perspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/reproduction-a-female-perspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/reproduction-a-female-perspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2750"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/reproduction-a-female-perspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/reproduction-a-female-perspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":489,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/reproduction-a-female-perspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486\/revisions\/489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/reproduction-a-female-perspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/reproduction-a-female-perspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/reproduction-a-female-perspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}