Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/05/17/136399684/bloggers-ugly-conclusions-anger-some-in-the-black-communitySo the guy's racist -- or stupid, or wants attention -- but what I don't get is everything else.
Why does an evolutionary psychologist work from the London School of Economics?
Who on the PT staff thought publishing a blog called The Scientific Fundamentalist was a good idea? And with zero oversight?inb4 POLITICAL CORRECTNESS IS DESTROYING US!
He doesn't work for London School of Economics, it says he's associated with them.
Also, I don't get what the drama is. He complied the study based on questionnaires - ie, he asked males and females of all races who they find most attractive, and the least attractive ones happen to be black women.
OKCupid did a study too (I think it's recently, although I could be wrong) where they found that black women get contacted the least on the dating site, even thought they tend to send out the most messages.
They also get the least replies.
Besides, I don't believe that any research associated with 'race' is racist. Instead of screaming racism, maybe people should do further research to debunk his claims.
Are scientists, social and natural, to completely avoid this topic for the fear of offending people? Ridiculous.
The whole study was a whole lot of shit to begin with. The best way to deal with this isn't to go on a racist screaming sprees but to debunk him using scientific method.
Discrediting a scientist is the worst thing anyone can do to a scientist.
All this is going to do is, people will get upset, scream about it for a bit then forget about it. Then a year later, this man will come up with some other ridiculous claims, and so on in circles.
He already did a study claiming reason Africa is a mess is because Africans have low IQs or something.
Someone should do a study debunking everything he'd ever done. People do that to tons of sociologists and psychologists all the time.
Originally posted by lil bitchiness
Oh no, you didn't!
Which reminds me of this blonde joke:
What happens when a blonde transfers from a psychology to a math degree?
- The average IQ in both departments drops.
Department rivalries aside, I agree with you. The outrage shouldn't be the "racism" of the findings, but that is seems like the methods were unscientific and the conclusions unfounded.
Originally posted by lil bitchiness
Besides, I don't believe that any research associated with 'race' is racist. Instead of screaming racism, maybe people should do further research to debunk his claims.
Are scientists, social and natural, to completely avoid this topic for the fear of offending people? Ridiculous.
there are some problems with this, however
we don't have full acess to the data, we don't have a lot of money to do properly controlled experiments, etc, etc, etc
my first post was going to be more about the actual issues with the study, but it is often hard to make talking about statistical analysis or methodology into something worth discussing, especially on a forum where the required age to post is 13
that, and if you look at it, the methods are so poor in this instance that it really shouldn't require such an in depth analysis. It is either that this guy is a terribly sloppy scientist (totally possible, there are lots of them) or he has some a priori bias he wants to prove going in. Advertising that he wants to offend people on his website, to me, suggests that it is the latter, and he just thinks he is being persecuted for "bringing the truth".
I agree with you entirely though, and there are racial things that most people wouldn't even think of that are in dire need of study. One really interesting article I came across a few years ago talks about how being in a racial minority might be better if you are part of the "unpopular" group.
Basically, if you are black in a white society, and people don't like you, you can adopt racial identities against these "in-groups" that protect your self esteem and make you feel valid, whereas if a white child is ostrasized by white peers, they have no such identity to cling to, and actually show worse signs of depression and other coping strategies. I'm not pointing that out as a type of "white victimhood", just trying to agree with you entirely, saying there are things we shouldn't be afraid to study, just because it might be a little taboo.
However, I don't think we should confuse good research on race issues with what this guy has done.