Saturday, June 11, 2011

Implicit Bias and Affirmative Action

A few weeks ago, the MIT Tech ran an opinion piece "It's good to be king" ("Innate ability may explain gender gaps") raising questions about the "deeply suspicious" nature of the "subtle bias" used to justify measures taken to increase participation of women in the sciences at MIT. This well-written piece argued that the gender-dependence of intelligence variability may explain the gaps of women in the sciences. The Tech ran a subsequent counterpoint "Intelligence variability is not gender-dependent" that argues against the intelligence variability claim, pointing out that this is not true across cultures.

I am glad that The Tech is taking on this interesting question and would encourage them to dig a bit deeper into the literature of and issues surrounding gender inequity in the sciences. I wrote a Letter to the Editor that ran yesterday about how in the argument about affirmative action, it is important to consider the (often implicit) biases that the action is intended to counteract.

13 comments:

Reid K said...

Keith Yost is supposedly a bit of a troll, according to my friend. He intentionally writes (reasonably good, actually) opinion pieces challenging commonly held beliefs at MIT, regardless of which side of the issue he's actually on. I don't actually know if it's true.

Jill Gaulding said...

Jean, I appreciate the points you made in your letter to the Editor. It saddens me to think these discussions are still taking place at MIT -- and without much change from the conversation I remember taking place in Baker House dorm, when I was there as a freshman in 1984. I was shocked and depressed then to learn that my male classmates thought I was at MIT "because of affirmative action." Maybe that's one of the reasons why I eventually turned from Course 9 (cognitive science) to discrimination law? Keep up the good fight - we'll follow you on Twitter!

James said...

Interesting read. I'm glad that you took the time to write.

Thanks

Anonymous said...

Excellent article. Very interesting to read. I really love to read such a nice article. Thanks! keep rocking. budget radiators

Anonymous said...

Great post i must say and thanks for the information. Education is definitely a sticky subject. However, is still among the leading topics of our time. πυρηνα ειδησεων

Anonymous said...

I have a hard time describing my thoughts on content, but I really felt I should here. Your article is really great. I like the way you wrote this information. buying vape Devices in UAE

Anonymous said...

I really liked this publish. It is truly amazing. The writer might be quite skilled. I fairly appreciate to be able to study such content on this site. Legal steroids UK

Anonymous said...

It looks very spectacular. And article gives me a lot of information .be thankful, I truly discovered very awesome and exclusive concepts. So this might be useful to everybody... Thanks for creating this interesting blog. cattle mineral supplements

Anonymous said...

Pretty good post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say that I have really enjoyed reading your blog posts. Any way I'll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you post again soon. Big thanks for the useful info. Buy anabolic steroids online

Anonymous said...

Thank you for this post. That's all I are able to say. You most absolutely have built this blog website into something special. Portal Hire Gloucestershire

Anonymous said...

This is also a very good post which I really enjoyed reading. It is not everyday that I have the possibility to see something like this.. cannabis business Canada

Anonymous said...

This was a really great contest and hopefully I can attend the next one. It was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed myself. starting a cannabis business

Anonymous said...

Wonderful illustrated information. I thank you about that. No doubt it will be very useful for my future projects. Would like to see some other posts on the same subject! hemp cbd business plan