Women in science tend to be shy about promoting themselves, and that has serious costs. A study in 2019 of more than six million articles with women as the principal author showed that they are less likely to use self-promotional terms, such as “novel” and “unique” and “unprecedented,” to describe their findings. The trend is especially true for articles in the most prestigious journals, which almost by definition feature research that is groundbreaking. In the highest-impact journals that publish the most important cutting-edge research, women are 21 percent less likely to use positive and
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