Biomedical researchers have long relied more heavily on male animals and cell lines than female ones, and even some clinical studies have overlooked the effects of drugs or other medical interventions on women. Earlier this year, an analysis of more than 2,000 research papers from five surgical journals documented this bias.
“Women make up half the population, but in surgical literature, 80 percent of the studies only use males,” study coauthor Melina Kibbe of Northwestern Medicine said in an August press release.
In response, editors of the journals in question said that they would require study authors to indicate the sex of animals and cell lines used in their experiments, and to provide a legitimate rationale for studies that use only one sex.
This disparity ...
