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Women members of the US Department of Energy's Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (BESAC) have challenged what they see as the remnants of an ‘old boys’ network' pattern of neutron use that risks circumventing the peer review process.

At last week's meeting of BESAC (see above) several women questioned whether DOE facilities were really open to all scientists on the basis of merit, or whether people with the right connections monopolize beam time at the expense of outsiders. And the women suggested that their gender is heavily underrepresented among neutron users.

Patricia Dehmer, director of the department's $700-million basic energy sciences programme, has transformed the composition of the advisory panel.

In doing so, she has not only shifted the gender balance but also demolished the cosy consensus that used to exist between the panel and the programme managers it is supposed to supervise.

Last week's collision arose when Jack Fischer, vice-chair of the Neutron Scattering Society of America, told the panel how researchers with contacts at the facilities can often find ways to explore ideas that they consider interesting.

Geraldine Richmond, a chemist at the University of Oregon and two-year member of BESAC, asked why this was going on, when “this community doesn't have a reputation of generosity to outside users”. Fischer responded that good ideas “didn't go away” just because they failed the peer review process.

At that point, Marye Anne Fox, vice-president for research at the University of Texas at Austin, and the most senior female scientist on the panel, rebuked Fischer for failing to treat Richmond's question seriously and accused him of condoning “a circumvention of the peer review process”.

Patricia Thiel, head of materials chemistry at Iowa State University, then asked Fischer for a breakdown of the Neutron Scattering Society's membership. An office-bearer of the society said that women members numbered 15-20 out of a total of 750.

As Thiel observed, this suggested women are grossly underrepresented among neutron users, as compared with their representation in fields of science such as structural biology and many branches of chemistry that could use the technique.