Skip to main content
  • Submit
  • About
    • Editorial Board
    • PNAS Staff
    • FAQ
    • Accessibility Statement
    • Rights and Permissions
    • Site Map
  • Contact
  • Journal Club
  • Subscribe
    • Subscription Rates
    • Subscriptions FAQ
    • Open Access
    • Recommend PNAS to Your Librarian
  • Log in
  • My Cart

Main menu

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Current
    • Special Feature Articles - Most Recent
    • Special Features
    • Colloquia
    • Collected Articles
    • PNAS Classics
    • List of Issues
  • Front Matter
  • News
    • For the Press
    • This Week In PNAS
    • PNAS in the News
  • Podcasts
  • Authors
    • Information for Authors
    • Editorial and Journal Policies
    • Submission Procedures
    • Fees and Licenses
  • Submit
  • About
    • Editorial Board
    • PNAS Staff
    • FAQ
    • Accessibility Statement
    • Rights and Permissions
    • Site Map
  • Contact
  • Journal Club
  • Subscribe
    • Subscription Rates
    • Subscriptions FAQ
    • Open Access
    • Recommend PNAS to Your Librarian

User menu

  • Log in
  • My Cart

Search

  • Advanced search
Home
Home

Advanced Search

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Current
    • Special Feature Articles - Most Recent
    • Special Features
    • Colloquia
    • Collected Articles
    • PNAS Classics
    • List of Issues
  • Front Matter
  • News
    • For the Press
    • This Week In PNAS
    • PNAS in the News
  • Podcasts
  • Authors
    • Information for Authors
    • Editorial and Journal Policies
    • Submission Procedures
    • Fees and Licenses

New Research In

Physical Sciences

Featured Portals

  • Physics
  • Chemistry
  • Sustainability Science

Articles by Topic

  • Applied Mathematics
  • Applied Physical Sciences
  • Astronomy
  • Computer Sciences
  • Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
  • Engineering
  • Environmental Sciences
  • Mathematics
  • Statistics

Social Sciences

Featured Portals

  • Anthropology
  • Sustainability Science

Articles by Topic

  • Economic Sciences
  • Environmental Sciences
  • Political Sciences
  • Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
  • Social Sciences

Biological Sciences

Featured Portals

  • Sustainability Science

Articles by Topic

  • Agricultural Sciences
  • Anthropology
  • Applied Biological Sciences
  • Biochemistry
  • Biophysics and Computational Biology
  • Cell Biology
  • Developmental Biology
  • Ecology
  • Environmental Sciences
  • Evolution
  • Genetics
  • Immunology and Inflammation
  • Medical Sciences
  • Microbiology
  • Neuroscience
  • Pharmacology
  • Physiology
  • Plant Biology
  • Population Biology
  • Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
  • Sustainability Science
  • Systems Biology
Research Article

The Diversity–Innovation Paradox in Science

Bas Hofstra, Vivek V. Kulkarni, Sebastian Munoz-Najar Galvez, Bryan He, Dan Jurafsky, and Daniel A. McFarland
PNAS April 28, 2020 117 (17) 9284-9291; first published April 14, 2020; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1915378117
Bas Hofstra
aGraduate School of Education, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: bhofstra@stanford.edu mcfarland@stanford.edu
Vivek V. Kulkarni
bDepartment of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Sebastian Munoz-Najar Galvez
aGraduate School of Education, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Bryan He
bDepartment of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Dan Jurafsky
bDepartment of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305;
cDepartment of Linguistics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Daniel A. McFarland
aGraduate School of Education, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: bhofstra@stanford.edu mcfarland@stanford.edu
  1. Edited by Peter S. Bearman, Columbia University, New York, NY, and approved March 16, 2020 (received for review September 5, 2019)

  • Article
  • Figures & SI
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF
Loading

Significance

By analyzing data from nearly all US PhD recipients and their dissertations across three decades, this paper finds demographically underrepresented students innovate at higher rates than majority students, but their novel contributions are discounted and less likely to earn them academic positions. The discounting of minorities’ innovations may partly explain their underrepresentation in influential positions of academia.

Abstract

Prior work finds a diversity paradox: Diversity breeds innovation, yet underrepresented groups that diversify organizations have less successful careers within them. Does the diversity paradox hold for scientists as well? We study this by utilizing a near-complete population of ∼1.2 million US doctoral recipients from 1977 to 2015 and following their careers into publishing and faculty positions. We use text analysis and machine learning to answer a series of questions: How do we detect scientific innovations? Are underrepresented groups more likely to generate scientific innovations? And are the innovations of underrepresented groups adopted and rewarded? Our analyses show that underrepresented groups produce higher rates of scientific novelty. However, their novel contributions are devalued and discounted: For example, novel contributions by gender and racial minorities are taken up by other scholars at lower rates than novel contributions by gender and racial majorities, and equally impactful contributions of gender and racial minorities are less likely to result in successful scientific careers than for majority groups. These results suggest there may be unwarranted reproduction of stratification in academic careers that discounts diversity’s role in innovation and partly explains the underrepresentation of some groups in academia.

  • diversity
  • innovation
  • science
  • inequality
  • sociology of science

Footnotes

  • ↵1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: bhofstra{at}stanford.edu or mcfarland{at}stanford.edu.
  • Author contributions: B. Hofstra, V.V.K., and D.A.M. designed research; B. Hofstra, V.V.K., S.M.-N.G., B. He, D.J., and D.A.M. performed research; B. Hofstra, V.V.K., S.M.-N.G., B. He, D.J., and D.A.M. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; B. Hofstra, V.V.K., S.M.-N.G., B. He, D.J., and D.A.M. analyzed data; and B. Hofstra and D.A.M. wrote the paper.

  • The authors declare no competing interest.

  • This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.

  • See online for related content such as Commentaries.

  • This article contains supporting information online at https://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1915378117/-/DCSupplemental.

Published under the PNAS license.

View Full Text
PreviousNext
Back to top
Article Alerts
Email Article

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on PNAS.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
The Diversity–Innovation Paradox in Science
(Your Name) has sent you a message from PNAS
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the PNAS web site.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Citation Tools
The Diversity–Innovation Paradox in Science
Bas Hofstra, Vivek V. Kulkarni, Sebastian Munoz-Najar Galvez, Bryan He, Dan Jurafsky, Daniel A. McFarland
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Apr 2020, 117 (17) 9284-9291; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1915378117

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Request Permissions
Share
The Diversity–Innovation Paradox in Science
Bas Hofstra, Vivek V. Kulkarni, Sebastian Munoz-Najar Galvez, Bryan He, Dan Jurafsky, Daniel A. McFarland
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Apr 2020, 117 (17) 9284-9291; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1915378117
Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Mendeley logo Mendeley
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: 117 (17)
Table of Contents

Submit

Sign up for Article Alerts

Article Classifications

  • Social Sciences
  • Social Sciences

Jump to section

  • Article
    • Abstract
    • Innovation as Novelty and Impactful Novelty in Text
    • Results
    • Discussion
    • Materials and Methods
    • Acknowledgments
    • Footnotes
    • References
  • Figures & SI
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF

You May Also be Interested in

Abstract depiction of a guitar and musical note
Science & Culture: At the nexus of music and medicine, some see disease treatments
Although the evidence is still limited, a growing body of research suggests music may have beneficial effects for diseases such as Parkinson’s.
Image credit: Shutterstock/agsandrew.
Scientist looking at an electronic tablet
Opinion: Standardizing gene product nomenclature—a call to action
Biomedical communities and journals need to standardize nomenclature of gene products to enhance accuracy in scientific and public communication.
Image credit: Shutterstock/greenbutterfly.
One red and one yellow modeled protein structures
Journal Club: Study reveals evolutionary origins of fold-switching protein
Shapeshifting designs could have wide-ranging pharmaceutical and biomedical applications in coming years.
Image credit: Acacia Dishman/Medical College of Wisconsin.
White and blue bird
Hazards of ozone pollution to birds
Amanda Rodewald, Ivan Rudik, and Catherine Kling talk about the hazards of ozone pollution to birds.
Listen
Past PodcastsSubscribe
Goats standing in a pin
Transplantation of sperm-producing stem cells
CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing can improve the effectiveness of spermatogonial stem cell transplantation in mice and livestock, a study finds.
Image credit: Jon M. Oatley.

Similar Articles

Site Logo
Powered by HighWire
  • Submit Manuscript
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • RSS Feeds
  • Email Alerts

Articles

  • Current Issue
  • Latest Articles
  • Archive

PNAS Portals

  • Anthropology
  • Chemistry
  • Classics
  • Front Matter
  • Physics
  • Sustainability Science
  • Teaching Resources

Information

  • Authors
  • Editorial Board
  • Reviewers
  • Librarians
  • Press
  • Site Map
  • PNAS Updates

Feedback    Privacy/Legal

Copyright © 2021 National Academy of Sciences. Online ISSN 1091-6490