Finkbeiner test

The Finkbeiner test has been linked to affirmative action, because writing can cause readers to view women in science as different from men in negative or unfair ways.

[5] Both journalists agree that the test "should apply mainly to the sort of general-interest scientist profiles that one might find in The New York Times or the front section of Nature, which are supposed to focus on professional accomplishments".

Even Finkbeiner, who vowed to "ignore gender" in her writing, actually tripped up on the tendency to focus on sex; in an astronomer's profile she considered mentioning that the scientist was the "first" to win a certain award.

Thus, emphasizing sex in profiles about members of marginalized groups reinforces their supposed difference, perpetuating gender bias in science.

[8] A few hours after publication the New York Times revised the obituary to address some of the criticisms; the revised version begins "She was a brilliant rocket scientist who followed her husband from job to job..."[8][9] Another New York Times article, on Jennifer Doudna, published on 11 May 2015,[10] drew similar criticism with reference to the Finkbeiner test.

[11] An article in The Globe and Mail on astrophysicist Victoria Kaspi,[12] published on 16 February 2016, drew the same criticism,[13] as did David Quammen's book A Tangled Tree, for giving women scientists, especially Lynn Margulis, short shrift.