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Author Credentials

Lexico defines a credential as "a qualification, achievement, quality, or aspect of a person's background, especially when used to indicate their suitability for something."

What makes an author’s background?

• Education
• Field-related expertise
• Research career
• Publications: articles, books, etc.
• Academic affiliation: university, research units
• Contributions to professional meetings: conferences, seminars, etc.
• National and international professional awards
• Appearances as an expert consultant in reputable media

Subjectivity and Bias

Definition:

The Cambridge Dictionary defines bias as "the action of supporting or opposing a particular person or thing in an unfair way, because of allowing personal opinions to influence your judgment." It's like saying your mom really does make the best lasagna in the world, no matter what.

Unfairness and one-sidedness distinguish bias from facts and informed opinions.

Writers and speakers are often described as being slightly or strongly biased or in favour of a particular argument, theory, or trend. Or we might say they're impartial.

They may also be unconsciously biased; that is, authors may be biased without being aware of their own bias. After looking at the Cognitive Bias Codes further down on this page, you may come to find a few new biases of your own.

Synonyms for bias:

• prejudice, partiality, partisanship, favouritism, unfairness, one-sidedness
• bigotry, intolerance, racism, racialism, sexism, heterosexism, homophobia, chauvinism
• predisposition, leaning, tendency, inclination, propensity, proclivity, proneness, predilection
• parti-pris

Antonyms for bias:

• objectivity, fairness, impartiality

Sources of Bias

• Background: education, culture, religion
• Political beliefs, ideology and allegiance
• Social class and socioeconomic status
• In-group membership
• Ethnic community
• Age, gender, profession, upbringing, etc.

Bias Uncovered

Bias in Trump’s discourse: This short analysis aims to show how Trump let’s bias surface through his language choices.

Media Bias/Fact Check: Is your preferred news source more to the Right? Left? Or Center? Of course, this media bias checker can’t help but have biases of its own since the developers had to choose which variables to measure and how much importance to give each variable.

Bias in Academia, the Media and Beyond: Once you explore the incredible number of biases in this Cognitive Bias Codex, you may be surprised to learn that we all live by biases of one sort or another.

The number of biases can be overwhelming. You may want to approach the infographic by first focusing on the four categories. After that move to the sub-categories and it will be easier to understand and organize all the biases in a more structured way. This cheat sheet can help you, too.

Competing Interests: With all these potential biases that can have an impact on research design, results and reporting, authors and researchers are encouraged by academic and research communities and publications to be as objective as possible.

In practical terms, this means that authors are asked to be up front about any competing interests they have that could bias their research and how they report it. Knowing these potential biases, readers are then better able to evaluate for themselves how to view the articles that report the research.

Nature Research gives potential authors this definition for competing interests:

“For the purposes of this policy, competing interests are defined as financial and non-financial interests that could directly undermine, or be perceived to undermine the objectivity, integrity and value of a publication, through a potential influence on the judgements and actions of authors with regard to objective data presentation, analysis and interpretation.”

View Nature Research’s policy for examples of financial and non-financial competing interests. Here are a few of them to get an idea:

• Having received equipment or supplies from an organization that could be affected by the research
• Having recently worked for an organization that could be affected by the research
• Having a patent that could be affected by the research
• Having shares of a company that could be affected by the research
• Being an unpaid advisor to a commercial organization that could be affected by the research