Implicit bias against women (Nature 491, 495; 2012) has a record of influencing the design of experiments and collection of data in the life and mind sciences.

Over the past four decades, feminist scientists, historians and philosophers of science have presented case study after case study showing how sexist bias can distort scientific results. Examples include work by Rebecca Jordan-Young on brain-organization theory, Anne Fausto-Sterling on the biological study of sex differences and Anelis Kaiser on neuroimaging.

In the interest of greater accuracy, controls for sexist bias need to be more rigorous.