Criticism of the paper “The association between early career informal mentorship in academic collaborations and junior author performance”

The authors of this letter represent a large student body who have generally had especially positive experiences with female mentors’ advice and mentorships and do not support the conclusions of the article “The association between early career informal mentorship in academic collaborations and junior author performance” because its conclusions regarding gender reach beyond the article’s scope and because the quality of mentorships cannot be analysed only through citation counts. Publications are not equivalent to learning outcomes or professional advancement.After careful review of the aforementioned article, we see numerous scientific flaws. The causal inferences that can be drawn from the observed effects of gender on the mentor-protégé relationship are insubstantial and other aspects of the paper are limited in the reductionist design of their mentor-protégé relationship assessment, which is based on the scientific impact of future papers.