3 ms·
I am definitely not a scientist, but speculating on race because of names you find to be too hispanic to be white feels like spectacularly bad science to me. Th
by drugstorecowboy 5y ago
I am definitely not a scientist, but speculating on race because of names you find to be too hispanic to be white feels like spectacularly bad science to me. This is not my field though so perhaps that is normal an accepted.
- chaps 5y agoThe point of name-based analysis wasn't for publication or even "science", but to instead show that the analysis done by the researcher was very likely wrong in order to prevent its publication. There is no way in hell I would ever publish anything that relied on name-based analysis as an accurate measure, that would be deeply unethical as far as I'm concerned. I did ask around with these exact concerns in-mind, which led to this paper by the census in their evaluation of this exact problem (the Passel-Word Spanish Surname List was what I compared against): https://www.census.gov/library/working-papers/1993/demo/POP-twps0004.html https://www.census.gov/library/working-papers/1993/demo/POP-... So, I get it, and I had the same concerns as you, but I like to believe I followed proper due diligence in making sure my approach was reasonable. Especially against the risk of the paper being published (consider how the paper could be used in racist narratives).
- drugstorecowboy 5y agoThat makes sense, thank you for the clarification. I apologize, I should not have worded my former comment so strongly.
- chaps 5y agoNo worries!
- s1artibartfast 5y agoThere are some large datasets for name-race correlations that can and have been used in real science. It is statistical, so not an accurate prediction for an individual, but has some merit for large groups. For example, someone with the name José Santiago Hernández very is unlikely to be Germanic-white versus Hispanic-white.