As in many other fields, gender bias pervades the sciences.

就像在其他許多領域一樣，性別偏見在科學領域也隨處可見。

Men score higher starting salaries, have more mentoring, and have better odds of being hired.

男性的起薪更高，有更多指導，被僱用的機會也更大。

Studies show they're also perceived as more competent than women in STEM fields.

研究表明，在STEM (科學、技術、工程和數學教育)領域，他們也被認為比女性更有能力。

And new research reveals that men are more likely to receive excellent letters of recommendation, too.

新研究表明，男性也更有可能收到優秀的推薦信。

"Say, you know, this is the best student I've ever had."

“你知道，這是我遇到的最好的學生。”

Kuheli Dutt, a social scientist and diversity officer at Columbia University's Lamont campus.

哥倫比亞大學拉蒙特校區的社會科學家和多樣性官員庫赫裡杜特說。

Compare those excellent letters, she says, to a merely good letter:

相比那些優秀的申請信，僅僅是優秀的申請信:

"The candidate was productive, or nelligent, or a solid scientist or something that's clearly solid praise,"

她表示“候選人或高效，或聰明，或是可靠的科學家，或其他明顯可靠的讚揚，”

but nothing that singles out the candidate as exceptional or one of a kind.

但是，沒有什麼能把候選人單獨列為特殊或任一一種。

Dutt and her cllagues studied more than 1,200 letters of recommendation for postdoc positions in geoscience.

杜特和她的同事研究了100多封地球科學博士後職位的推薦信。

They were all redacted for gender and other identifying information, so Dutt and her team could assign them a score without knowing the sex of the student.

它們都是根據性別和其他識別資訊進行編輯,所以,杜特和她的團隊可以在不知道學生性別的情況下給他們打分。

They found that female applicants were only half as likely to snag superlative letters, compared to their male counterparts.

他們發現，與男性申請者相比,女性申請者獲得A的可能性只有男性申請者的一半。

That includes letters of rec from all over the world, and written by, yes, men and women.

其中包括來自世界各地男性和女性的推薦信。

The findings are in the journal Nature Geoscience.

研究結果發表於雜誌《自然地球科學》。

Dutt says they were not able to evaluate the actual scientific qualifications of the actual scientific qualifications of the applicants using the archival data.

杜特表示，他們無法利用檔案資料評估申請人的實際科學資格。

But she says the resuts stil suggest women in geoscience are at a potential disadvantage from the very beginning of their careers starting with those less than outstanding letters of rec.

但她表示，研究結果仍表明，在地學, 女性從職業生涯的一開始就處於潛在的劣勢,從那些不太出色的推薦信開始。

"We're not trying to assign blame or criticize anyone or call anyone consciously sexist or something like that.

“我們並不是試圖指責或批評任何人， 或稱任何人有意識地性別歧視，或類似的事情。

Rather, the point is to use the results of this study to open up meaningful dialogues on implicit gender bias, be it at a departmental level or an institutional level or even a discipline level."

相反,重點是要利用這項研究的結果，在部門、機構甚至學科層面上，就隱性性別偏見展開有意義的對話。”

Which may lead to some recommendations for the letter writers themselves.

這可能會給申請人提供一些建議。