"If I can abstractly construct an ulterior motive for the thing - despite having absolutely no evidence - that means the thing is false. Checkmate, science!"
If folks where actually skeptical of the paper, you would think they would provide some evidence to back up their thought process, based on experiences from academia, or a study of crowd movement in relation to race that shows contrary evidence to the paper itself, instead of saying they can imagine the possibility of bias.
I mean I can picture an evil cabal of racists who purposefully show up in discussions like this to purposefully sow fear, uncertainty and doubt. Is that the level of HN discourse?
The ability to imagine something isn't evidence of it's existence, nor is it healthy skepticism.
So essentially, his assertion that academia is systemically bias, can only be proven through:
>Experience in academia
>Papers, which you can only get money to work on full time through academia
Seems convenient.
Looking at the paper itself it found evidence of both a gender bias (either ingroup/outgroup or against men) and a racial bias (either ingroup/outgroup or against blacks). It notably, did not censor any facts about this gender bias, and instead published them in full. In the discussion however, it discussed these two facts with overwhelming bias, treating the observed racial bias with the utmost seriousness while not discussing the observed gender bias at all.
I think there's grounds to be sceptical of anything academia says on politically charged topics.
The point of the parent's example was to criticize the picturing of random technically possible but bad things about people you disagree with. They are specifically saying that it would be silly to make the exact claim that you are accusing them of making.
As a scientist, if you find "Black people good, white people bad" --> publication + promotion
You find "White people good, black people bad" --> you lose your job
Completely orthogonal to the morality of it, it creates something called publication bias (or the file drawer problem) in the social sciences. It's a huge issue.
>"Black people good, white people bad" --> publication + promotion
>"White people good, black people bad" --> you lose your job
It is totally believable that the bias problem you're referring to exists, but your description is provocative, dramatized, oversimplified, and carries a smug tone, and I wish it wasn't any of those things.
To back up the parents claim: The authors also submitted different test studies to different peer-review boards. The methodology was identical, and the variable was that the purported findings either went for, or against, the liberal worldview (for example, one found evidence of discrimination against minority groups, and another found evidence of "reverse discrimination" against straight white males). Despite equal methodological strengths, the studies that went against the liberal worldview were criticized and rejected, and those that went with it were not. - https://theweek.com/articles/441474/how-academias-liberal-bi...
And of course, ignore Asians at all costs. Or if the study is about overrepresentation, invent a new, "Asian + white" category, and hide disaggregated numbers.
