The conservative bias of life scientists.

Life scientists may think of themselves as liberal, but they seem to have a strong conservative bias that negatively impacts diversity in research. The bias can be revealed with a Google Scholar search; the phrase "conserved from [species X] to humans" occurs over 90,000 times, yet the reverse, "conserved from humans to [species X]" is found fewer than 1000 times (Figure 1A). I will explore why this conservative bias in direction exists in the literature and the implications that it has on our thinking and choices for research.