3 ms·
Of course there are. Which makes Hanson's next sentence - "Why don’t the study’s authors want us to hear about that?" - surprising. Overcoming Bias, indeed.
by weichi 16y ago
Of course there are. Which makes Hanson's next sentence - "Why don’t the study’s authors want us to hear about that?" - surprising. Overcoming Bias, indeed.
- Symmetry 16y agoYes, that the studies authors didn't find the same things salient as Hanson did is probably a better explanation than some sort of conscious hiding of results. But what would you say could be good reasons for this very (to me) puzzling data.
- yummyfajitas 16y agoI believe that Hanson was remarking on the fact that, although the explanation given is plausible, the authors didn't discuss it in the paper and pooled men and women together afterwards. I don't think he was putting it forward as the only possible explanation.
- weichi 16y agoBut Hanson doesn't say "Why don't the study's authors discuss possible explanations for this finding, such as xxx?" Instead, he insinuates that the authors were perfectly aware of this possible explanation, but think that their readers should not be exposed to it for some nefarious reasons (that's what the phrase "why doesn't X want us to hear Y" means colloquially). This sentence leads me to believe that Hanson is coming to this discussion with some biases of his own. Anyway, other explanations could be that the result is not real (which Hanson does discuss at the end), or that women from these colleges choose lesser-paying careers for some reason other than that they are married to rich men ... perhaps women at elite colleges 25 years ago were unusually interested in charity work. I don't think Hanson's proposed explanation is necessarily wrong, but that phrase "why don't they want us to hear about this?" really rubs me the wrong way.