American Grant Writing: Race Matters

PHPNerd writes "You might expect that science, particularly American science, would be color-blind. Though fewer people from some of the country's ethnic minorities are scientists than the proportions of those minorities in the population suggest should be the case, once someone has got bench space in a laboratory, he might reasonably expect to be treated on merit and nothing else. Unfortunately, a study just published in Science suggests that is not true. The study looked at the pattern of research grants awarded by the NIH and found that race matters a lot. Moreover, Asian and Hispanic scientists do just as well as white ones. Black scientists, however, fare badly."

Comments

Why have any racial indicators?

[Aqualung812]

TFA says that they assume the peers are assuming race from "black sounding" names or historically black universities.

Why would any of these factor in during the peer review process? I would certainly hope that scientists understand what "double-blind" means & apply it to the review process. It doesn't matter what the person's name is or what university they went to or work at now. All that SHOULD matter is the quality of the science that is presented, therefore that is all that should be on the report that is peer-reviewed.

Re:Why have any racial indicators?

[jellomizer]

You are under the assumption that grant givers are part of the Peer Review process... They are not... The people who are allowed to give these grants are under huge amount of political pressure, and can get fired for doing the right thing. So say University A is on the East Coast and University B is on the West Cost and there was a Grant for studying earthquakes. NSF will most likely give the grant to University B even if University A had the better plan and University B had a complete crap request. Because if the University B had found out A got it. They will go to their congressman and goes up and people in the NSF will need to debate and have a bunch of political rambling. So it would be easier to fire the guy who did the right thing.

Chances are someone with a White Sounding name a Todd vs. Tyrone will get a grant because chances are better that a Todd will have more political connections then a Tyrone will.

Scientific community isn't immune to corruption. You need to face that fact, when humans are involved self interest will kick in, and cloud the truth.
 

Re:Why have any racial indicators?

[lgw]

We need to explicitly address racial inequity in order to become an equitable society.

An equitable society is one with the same rules for all. What you seem to desire is a society with politically-favored and politically-disfavored groups, aka corruption.

Re:Why have any racial indicators?

[geminidomino]

Oh hush. Don't you know that "equitable" doesn't mean the same thing once the race card has been played?

Affirmative Action

[Swanktastic]

It could simply be Affirmative Action catching up with a population. These sorts of studies always attempt to correct for "achievement" somehow, but two PhDs from Harvard may not be equally talented if one were to receive the position through some sort of AA. Sometimes things like this simply aren't measure

Re:Affirmative Action

[Missing.Matter]

Affirmative Action doesn't hand the student a degree, it just gets them in the school.

I often found that the hardest part is getting in. I applied to a top tier school early admission and was deferred to regular admission. Then I was waitlisted, and finally I was accepted. Once there, I found some kids who were accepted to early admission were borderline retarded, compulsive liars, and habitual slackers. Some of these kids didn't do too hot, but others joined frats and had a nice support network to help them through college (not to mention a steady supply of Adderall).

For a while it really irked me that these kids were picked before me, when I felt I was more qualified, but I eventually got over it when they dropped out of my program.

Re:Affirmative Action

[Riceballsan]

There are still other flaws, things that can be dangerous to the students within schools, If there are only 2 black students, and 15 white students in a class, both black students are doing terrible, The teacher may be afraid to fail them due to the risk of frivolous lawsuits or accusations of racism that can damn a career whether they succeed or fail. The fact is they can't prove or disprove anything of racism, the only fair way to test would be to have a white person and a black person submit identical papers, forge it so their histories are identical, send the white guys application to 50+ reviewers, and the black guys application to a different 50+ reviewers, then compare their rates. It may be racism, it might not be racism, but I believe trying to claim "The only reason I didn't get the job/grant/acceptance/promotion is because I am Black/Female/Asian/whatever is in more cases then not, a bogus claim, that then turns into a self fulfilling prophesy, almost everyone I have heard blame their race/gender for things, is almost always an underachiever hiding behind it saying they don't have a chance anyway.

Re:Affirmative Action

[Theovon]

One of the problems with affirmative action "getting them into the school" is that it can get them into schools that are above their intellectual level or competitive beyond what they're prepared for.

This is not any statement about any particular group's intelligence. This is about INDIVIDUAL intelligence. For instance, I (a white person) may not be cut out for Harvard Law School. Perhaps I should go to Cincinnati instead, because I'm more likely to succeed. (Cincinnati is a good law school, BTW.) If I went to Harvard, I'd probably break under the pressure and drop out, and a career councelor would do well to raise this issue to me. Now, let's consider a black person of intelligence equal to mine. If affirmative action helped them inappropriately get into Hardvard Law, then affirmative action has just DECREASED their chances of success!

That would be bad. Bad for that person, bad for our culture's progress towards equal rights, bad for our culture's perception of minorities and their capabilities, etc. (Being a minority doesn't make one more likely to be less intelligent, and unfortunately, some bigots need to have that fact reinforced regularly.) What we want is to give everyone an equal opportunity to SUCCEED, and to a certain extent, that involves placing them in the school where they are challenged appropriately, will learn best, and are most likely to succeed, IF THEY WORK HARD.

People are gifted with whatever intelligence they were born with, also affected by upbringing and primary education. This is not a basis on which to JUDGE people in terms of their human value so much as an attribute that varies from one person to another and which affects what they are capable of conceiving of intellectually. On the other hand, WORK ETHIC, is something that everyone should learn, and if you don't learn it, you are more likely to fail, and that is your fault if you do. If you are willing to WORK, then there is SOME job out there that you can do well at and succeed in. Our objective should be appropriate placement. Now, if someone decides that they want to go to a school that is above or below our recommendation, that is their choice. Our recommendation can be wrong, because we can incorrectly evaluate people. But that is a different matter.

The fact is, most people, regardless of race or any other attribute, would not do well in Harvard Law School.

More likely than an intelligence issue, the reason many people of lower socio-economic classes may fail at a place like Harvard is that they simply have not learned the sort of competitiveness and intellectual strategies that more affluent people perhaps tend to be exposed to in early life. (Of course, you also get your share of rich brats who are equally ignorant.) This is an issue of preparation, not smarts. Someone from a rich family in Boston may need an IQ of 115 to get through Harvard Law, in part because their parents are lawyers who have prepared their children for all the gotchas that happen in law school. Someone from the back waters of Appalacia may need an IQ of 125 to get through Harvard Law, simply because they have to do a whole hell of a lot more learning and adapting on the fly while they are there. Inner-city blacks are in the same boat as the back-water Appalacians. However, if the undereducated go to Cincinnati instead, they will succeed, and moreover, they will be able to impart to their children (who inherit the same genes, so it's not a racial issue) the knowledge necessary to succeed at Harvard.

Also, I need to make the obligatory comments about race. Race, as we perceive it, is based mostly on superficial factors like skin color. Africans, South Indians, etc. are brown because there's more sun in the place they're adapted to. Europeans are pink because there's less sun. You can do your own research on the relationship between UV, vitamin D, skin cancer, birth defects, etc. However, humans haven't been out of Africa long enough to evolve any really significant differences. At most, there's

Re:Affirmative Action

[Missing.Matter]

There are certainly opportunities available for disadvantaged kids. Along with 40 other students I spent 4 years of my undergrad tutoring inner city kids and helping them with science fair projects. I attribute 90% of my success in college to what I learned in science fair. The past couple weeks I worked in a program which gives about 100 inner city kids the opportunity to learn math, science, and robotics over the summer. They don't have to pay a dime for this. Sure it's not going to accommodate everyone, but there is an interview process to make sure only kids who are really interested get in.

There are opportunities out there for these kids if they really want them. I've met some seriously disadvantaged kids in my work, and they are some of the brightest most motivated kids I know, regardless of economic background. These kids aren't going to need affirmative action when they get to college, and are going to be way more qualified than some other applicants.

My general stance is that college is way too late to try to level the playing field. It should be done earlier, through the kinds of programs I've volunteered for in the past. That's where you really make a difference. No need for AA because you'll be building kids who don't need a handicap to compete.

Re:Affirmative Action

[Larryish]

I was born into a shitty situation, and I am a caucasian male.

Where is my ticket to Harvard?

Re:Affirmative Action

[BigDogCH]

How is this still mostly good? It does not look at those with obstacles, just skin color? We already have a financial aid system which looks at obstacles. I was born into a poor white family. I had to work my tail off for everything, while my minority friends were handed entrances into college and even allowed to skip some of the harder courses (under the premise that minorities always struggle in those courses so it is only fair to let them skip....everyone struggled). Now, quite a few of them have degrees that they honestly did not earn.

Doesn't that degrade the value of the degree for everyone?
Also, doesn't that spread true racism in many ways. Think of the aftermath when they compete for jobs with those that actually took the courses.

Not convinced.

[JustAnotherIdiot]

Their results show that the chance of a black scientist receiving a grant was 17%. For Asians, Hispanics and whites the number was between 26% and 29%.

For all we know, this statistic is just due to random chance.
As much as everyone loves to play the race card, you can not deny this IS a possibility.
I'm also not denying that it's a possibility that it is indeed the truth, though. -shrug-

Re:Not convinced.

[arth1]

Even if the sample sizes were large enough that the margin of error is small, it doesn't tell us what the cause is. That could be anything from a fallout from affirmative action to language skill development in the formative years, differentiation in fields of study, or a bunch of other factors that don't necessarily have much to do with skin colour or ethnicity.

Reality...

[Pro923]

Can't we just face the reality that some races are actually better are certain things than others due to millions of years of evolution? Let's face it - historically, the Europeans showed up to the Americas and Africa with guns while the natives were all throwing spears. A country as small as Germany almost took over the world 60 years ago. Why is that? Couldn't it be because something in the German evolutionary history has made their brains such that they're better engineers (ON AVERAGE) ?

Affirmative action?

[hsthompson69]

I wonder what the results would be if they controlled for people who benefitted from affirmative action policies that let them into schools with lower grades and test scores.

They've already noted this with law degrees: http://www.ashbrook.org/publicat/oped/morel/04/disaffirmation.html

It seems plausible to posit that regardless of ethnic or racial background, people who are held to lower standards might not fare so well in real life competition.

It doesn't prove it's not merit based

[erroneus]

This is unconvincing. Here's the deal:

It is well known that U.S. born black people going through college in the US get breaks not afforded to everyone else. We have even seen egregious examples of passes that should have been fails and even examples of plagiarism that has gone unaddressed and unpunished when done by black people. We know all too well how the system seeks "fairness and balance" by giving advantage to the "disadvantaged." But what happens after graduation?

Well, let's just say, I would be reluctant to go to a black doctor and would be more inclined to go to a doctor from India. Does that make me a racist? Hell no it doesn't. It's the fact that there has been a huge and competitive flow of medical students from India and only the best can get through the process due to various numeric limitations put into place by administrations in the name of "fairness, balance and diversity." Meanwhile, in order to keep the numbers of black doctors higher, they have to make allowances quite often. But how does this affect quality? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that if you have to lower standards in order to boost numbers, then quality will drop.

Does that mean "black doctors and scientists are of lesser quality" because they are black? NO! Not if you rate them on merit... individually without consideration of race. But when you start considering race, then you will see there will be "fewer black people get grants."

There is a lot more going on behind the scenes than this article addresses. It certainly doesn't offer detailed statistics covering the spread of scores presented by the various applicants.

Racism needs to go away. Every time someone tries to make a point like this, it just goes to show how racist they actually are.

Re:It doesn't prove it's not merit based

[jahudabudy]

Well, let's just say, I would be reluctant to go to a black doctor and would be more inclined to go to a doctor from India. Does that make me a racist? Hell no it doesn't.

Dude, no matter what the justification, whether it be right or wrong, judging someone's ability based SOLELY on their race is, in fact, the very definition of racism. Just b/c I am likely to be right doesn't make it any less racist for me to assume the black guy of the same height is better at basketball than the white guy. It's still stereotyping someone based on their race, i.e. racism.

Politically correct bias, maybe?

[marco.antonio.costa]

On the other hand black athletes do overwhelmingly better than white ones. Is it because of discrimination in the granting of NFL contracts to black guys over the whites?

Or it could be that genes that favor physical prowess over raw intellectual aptitude are more present in individuals with dark skin than those who are paler? Maybe the corollary is also possible, that the 'bookworm genes' are about 10% more present in people with white skin.

No, that would be politically incorrect - hell, criminal - to utter, ergo, discrimination on basis of race must be the issue here.

Another example of the 'opressed/opressor ideology' and collectivism that is being the downfall of western civilization on display, nothing to see here folks.

Really race? So racism?

[SmallFurryCreature]

Explain Einstein then. A jew. Oh, jews don't count. How german of you.

How come asians do well then? Hispanics?

So race only matters to blacks... the peers don't guess the race from Mr Hernandez Lopez? But guess the race of Denzel Washington? I see.

Last time I checked many American blacks have western names, some might resent it but how then can I tell color from it?

I think there is something else going on, something that nobody dares the touch. Me? I am not going to touch it either. Lets just all dance around the elephant in the room.

Oh never mind. How come that is acceptable to claim Jews are smart or asians study hard? But if you dare to even hint that maybe some other cultures (Since jews are not a race but a religion (with many divisions into different cultures)) have negative standouts?

There is a black stand-up comedian who always bitches about race. Then a black man becomes president. His comments? This ain't going change anything and just make it harder for blacks.

With an attitude like that I bet all the black papers are marked down by black peers angry another black man is doing well.

Oh wait, the article forgot that didn't it. There are plenty of peer's who are NOT white racists like me. So are they saying ALL peer reviewers got it in for the black man?

Oh and what about women? Science is old men, how are papers with female names rated?

Re:Anyone care to translate this post to English?

[pluther]

I can help. Which word didn't you understand?

EVERYONE needs to stop stereotyping

[alispguru]

The way to make racism like this go away is:

EVERYONE has to stop judging people on irrelevant factors.

This means that government and academia has to stop having lower standards for people in oppressed groups.

It also means people like you have to stop assuming that the person in front of you was a beneficiary of those lower standards just because they are a member of an oppressed group.

Your reasoning above is correct statistically, but may be doing an injustice to the individual standing in front of you - an injustice that has the same effect as the racism that started the whole mess.