That lack of room for bias is a reasonable intuition, but at least one straightforward experiment contradicts it: "In a randomized double-blind study (n = 127)

That lack of room for bias is a reasonable intuition, but at least one straightforward experiment contradicts it: "In a randomized double-blind study (n = 127), science faculty from research-intensive universities rated the application materials of a student — who was randomly assigned either a male or female name — for a laboratory manager position. Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant." http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109 http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109 Graphs summarizing the results are here: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2012/09/19/scientists-your-gender-bias-is-showing http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2012/09/19/...