EDITORIAL COMMENT

Abstract

The authors of this paper must be commended for attempting to answer a difficult question given limited data. The question was as follows: are there differences in the number of publications by Under Represented in Medicine (URiM) residents and faculty compared to their peers as well as by women compared to their peers? While this is an important question as it has ramifications for academic advancement, the methodology employed is concerning. Although the authors are intentional about acknowledging the problematic nature of how URiM status was obtained, this point warrants further highlighting. In this study, race was determined by origin of name, photo, biography and employing social media sources. Race is an indistinct socio-political construct that aggregates people into groups based on perceived differences. Particularly in the United States, a country with a contentious history regarding race, where policies such as the one-drop-rule were codified by law, using photos to establish identity erases the complexity of racial identity for those who may be, for example, White-appearing, but culturally identify as another race or ethnicity. In order to minimize the harm and burden that stereotyping may introduce, research that employs race as a classification variable, should use self-reported race rather than assigned. 1 Ioannidis J.P.A. Powe N.R. Yancy C. Recalibrating the use of race in medical research. JAMA - J Am Med Assoc. 2021; 325https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2021.0003 Google Scholar ,2 Lu C. Ahmed R. Lamri A. Anand S.S. Use of race, ethnicity, and ancestry data in health research. PLOS Glob Public Heal. 2022; 2https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0001060 Google Scholar The authors endeavored to validate their method by corroborating the race of 89 faculty members whose self-identified race was known, however it is unclear if this is an adequate sample size to detect a difference in the population of 2131 faculty members included in the study. We will therefore focus the remainder of the commentary on the findings pertaining to differences between women and men urologists.