8 ms·
Viral “racism in academia” story deleted when I started asking questions
- HideousKojima 4y agoThis is a follow-up to a thread that was discussed here on HN yesterday. I figured it would be interesting to see what someone trying to dig deeper into the details discovered. The prior thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32889408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32889408
- pwinnski 4y agoThis link seems best-suited as a comment on the existing thread, then, rather than a whole new thread.
- SpicyLemonZest 4y agoIt's always a hard question. If you didn't see the story in the first place this thread doesn't do much except feed confirmation bias about the typical veracity of shocking social media stories. But what fraction of the people who did see the story are going to go back and read a random comment on it the next day?
- HideousKojima 4y agoThe existing thread was flagged so no one would be able to see it. And even if they could, it's long since fallen off the front page. The best way to try to undo some of the harm caused by yesterday's false story is to give the follow-up/correction at least equal if not greater prominence.
- the_third_wave 4y agoNo, this link needs to be front centre with the existing thread linked back here - as it has been done. The existing thread is about a claim of racism which is clearly proven to be fake in the message originating this thread.
- altairprime 4y agoYou have the option of emailing the site admins (footer Contact link) and asking them to do this. But: They’re more likely to pin a link to this post at the top of the comments of yesterday’s post, based on how they’ve handled other situations like this.
- hersko 4y agoWe're all quick to believe what we want to believe...
- rs999gti 4y agoAnyone going to address the Asian elephant in the room? https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/led-aapi-scholars-thousands-academics-tell-supreme-court-support-affir-rcna41412 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/led-aapi-scholars...
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y agoI am not sure why this is an elephant at all? Right now schools can use just about any criteria they want. Why would they cede the control of the process at all?
- throw_m239339 4y ago> I am not sure why this is an elephant at all? Right now schools can use just about any criteria they wants. Why would it cede the control of the process at all? Cause it's racist thus immoral. Some american universities used to do that for jews. It's was bad back then it's still bad now. "race-conscious admission", what a sweet euphemism for racial discrimination in academia. Just call it something that sounds positive, the hell with our principles.
- HideousKojima 4y agoIt's also blatantly in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and in violation of the 14th Amendment for any state schools. But that hasn't stopped the courts and educational institutions from being explicitly and overtly racist via affirmative action.
- cma 4y agoAlumni preference is racist at lots of schools, since they were segregated in living memory and the chain of alumni admitted with special preference can't go back to a person of excluded race before the desegregation of the school.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y agoI am not arguing race. I am asking why from sheer 'ability to steer process in direction I want' would an institution not fight against any changes to the status quo just when they figured out a sweet spot for themselves? I guess what I am saying that it explains a lot behind the link provided.
- boomboomsubban 4y agoSo someone trolled on Twitter? Ok.
- HideousKojima 4y agoAnd plenty of people on HN (and elsewhere) swallowed the bait hook, line, and sinker. If you look at the thread on HN from yesterday you'll see plenty of people buying the story unquestionably (though fortunately there were a decent number of people expressing doubt). The problem is that stories like these gain traction and reinforce false narratives about the nature of racial discrimination and other issues. A lie travels halfway around the world before the truth gets its pants on.
- themitigating 4y agoWhy would anyone believe a story posted by one person that had no evidence?
- trention 4y agoBecause it agreed with their priors.
- colinmhayes 4y agoPeople will do anything to confirm their narrative.
- SpicyLemonZest 4y agoUltimately, it's normal to believe what people tell you when there's no obvious reason for doubt. If my coworker says they're late because they got stuck behind an accident, I'm not gonna demand photos and a police report. So to people who haven't acquired a high degree Internet literacy, saying "don't believe what you read" sounds like some kind of trick. I remember a passionate argument I had about some unsourced story of poor Stripe customer support. The other guy was genuinely baffled why I would question the poor merchant who was being so cruelly mistreated.
- mikece 4y agoJust as there are copycat criminals there are copycat forgeries and scams. The irony is that if this was just a "hey, check this out" stunt that had no basis in reality then it doesn't help solve the real biases and racist issues that remain but only serves to reinforce the biases of some that this is a non-existent issue. For the sake of those who really do suffer from prejudice I hope the author of this apparent scam is made to apologize.
- bfors 4y agoMakes me wonder how many totally false stories have impacted my view of the world.
- bombcar 4y agoTotally? Probably fewer than you think. But misrepresented or spun? Many many.
- 6510 4y agoif you want to believe badly enough its all real
- bko 4y agoWhen analyzing stories like this, I like to ask myself, what if the result were reversed? Would it be reported? For instance, if there is a study that says [group 1] are actually better managers than [group 2]. I ask myself what if the study found [group 2] is in fact better than [group 1]? It very well may be that [group 1] is in fact better managers, but if the reverse cannot be reported, then you're not getting any counterfactual evidence since it would be suppressed, ignored or manipulated. Basically it doesn't fit the popular narrative. You can apply this to other statements. If you hear a statement in which the reverse would be inconceivable, it's probably not a meaningful statement. If you hear a manager say "I stand with my employees", would the reverse make sense? Is there someone that would argue, no, I don't stand with my employees? If not, then that statement is a meaningless platitude and not conveying any information. The only caveat I would add is that the subject may add focus. Focusing on employees may be a signal to some value that is not universally shared, but people often hedge their bets and say something like "I stand with my employees, customers and stockholders", which is completely meaningless.
- dmix 4y agoThat’s a very clever way to look at things. So much of social media is littered with platitudes and virtue signalling where the thing being said is not only very low risk but not saying it would be career suicide (or at least cause endless foaming at the mouth), this is a useful way to filter out low effort content.
- dqpb 4y agoOf course, the irony is that lying about racism is itself an act of racism.
- barry-cotter 4y agoHow long until this gets flagged off the front page? Currently 07:34 San Francisco time, posted 21 minutes ago.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- TraceWoodgrains 4y agoI’m always happy when my writing gets noticed here, but culture war–connected content has a natural edge in environments like this, so I respect the site’s commitment to manually deweighting things like this to keep the overall focus more technical. It looks like this article has had further spread on HN than the initial hoax, which is all I personally was really hoping, so I’m more than satisfied.
- barry-cotter 4y agoAlmost ninety minutes and it doesn’t even have the [flagged] tag. Impressive.
- culopatin 4y agoWhat does a name have to do with race? Sounds more like xenophobia. It might also have to do with how many people from X country are associated with paper mills that publish garbage content. Unfortunately while it pads the individual resume, it washes the credibility of the rest as a whole. I know from experience that once a lab finds bad data from a country over and over, they ignore anything submitted by that school/group/nation/region.
- lm28469 4y ago> What does a name have to do with race? "race" when speaking of humans is the most undefined term you can come up with. It basically doesn't have any real scientific meaning anymore, that's why people call everything "racism" when in reality it often is something else. > A race is a categorization of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into groups generally viewed as distinct within a given society.[1] The term came into common usage during the 1500s, when it was used to refer to groups of various kinds, including those characterized by close kinship relations.[2] By the 17th century, the term began to refer to physical (phenotypical) traits, and then later to national affiliations. Modern science regards race as a social construct, an identity which is assigned based on rules made by society.[3][4] While partly based on physical similarities within groups, race does not have an inherent physical or biological meaning.[1][5][6] The concept of race is foundational to racism, the belief that humans can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. > Even though there is a broad scientific agreement that essentialist and typological conceptions of race are untenable,[14][15][16][17][18][19] scientists around the world continue to conceptualize race in widely differing ways.[20] While some researchers continue to use the concept of race to make distinctions among fuzzy sets of traits or observable differences in behavior, others in the scientific community suggest that the idea of race is inherently naive[9] or simplistic.[21] Still others argue that, among humans, race has no taxonomic significance because all living humans belong to the same subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization)
- tom-thistime 4y agoP.J. O'Rourke claimed that we tend to hire people who look like our nephews. It may be true. On the other hand, maybe not.
- username_my1 4y agoThis has been documented well in the German job market with very solid reasearch backing it. with that being said sensationalism and victim complex is a thing in Muslim / arab culture (I come from one), so finding made up stories about racism is possible
- dmix 4y agoThat works both ways, I know of Indian developers who only hire other indians, or east Asians who stick together. In Canada it’s a normal thing, Toronto is a big city divided into a ton of ethnic neighbourhoods (there’s a little x for every mini culture or ethnicity). This has a side effect of ethnic groups sticking together at work, where language, culture, religion, etc are similar. And it also doesn’t mean economic exclusion either. In places like Brampton the highest income bracket by religion is Hindu #1, then Jews, atheists, and Christians.
- FerociousTimes 4y agoThis should be frowned upon and targeted not praised or condoned. This reinforces ghettoization and propagation of ethnocentric worldviews with all the vices of this ideology from prejudice, xenophobia, you name it.
- dmix 4y agoMeh, Toronto is a vibrant multi-cultural place where everyone is accepted, we don't many race-obsessed issues like the US. Not sure where you're getting 'ghettoization' and 'xenophobia' from this.
- username_my1 4y agoYes that should also be addressed and fixed, in Germany for example in many cities there is a requirement for housing of all income levels in the same neighborhood, which leads to the ability for new comers (can be with low income) to mix and live in the same neighborhood. In France and Sweden it wasn't the case, most non Europeans were living in suburbs and out of sight, this lead to integration issue down the road as we see currently in both countries. Finally, Indian favoritism / discrimination in IT jobs in north America is a very specific topic that should be addressed, but it's not as large as institutionalized white racism that is much broader and well studied and affect more sectors in life including governmental services.
- socialismisok 4y agoIt does appear that the original tweet thread may be a fabrication, but the author here may be giving themselves too much credit for having the thread disappear. Seems like many people were asking hard questions.
- TraceWoodgrains 4y agoAuthor here. Many were! I noticed nothing original, and my direct question was only part of the picture. It was striking to me how quickly he started making things disappear after I asked, though, and so far as I can tell the timing is consistent specifically with that question being the immediate precipitating factor.
- warinukraine 4y ago
- TraceWoodgrains 4y agoHis name is public and visible on the archive page etc, but he is not prominent and at least deleted the thread rather than letting it continue to spread. I’d rather not unilaterally make this the defining moment in his public life long-term, so I’m keeping the name out of a Google-able permanent article.
- tootie 4y agoAlso, why exactly is it interesting that someone made up a story on the internet? It happens all the time.
- shadowgovt 4y ago> Twitter is not a space that rewards deep dives and careful examination of evidence. You have 280 characters. This is the strongest reason I have to stay off Twitter. Too many people making too many decisions on "vibes."
- wowokay 4y agoTotally understandable, honestly I use it to vent frustrations and yell at companies.
- TLLtchvL8KZ 4y agoI'm glad I don't have a reddit or twitter accounts anymore, you see this kinda stuff all the time and I'm convinced 99% of it is made up by people dreaming up weird fantasies for fake internet points.
- tinalumfoil 4y agoMy interest in reddit faded when someone posted a link to 4chan and, and I looked at it pretty disgusted at who would make a site dedicated to obviously fake, often offensive garbage. Then I saw their disclaimer, "The stories and information here are artistic work of fiction and falsehood. only a fool would take anything posted here as fact." It seems like a dumb way to come to this realization but after turning this statement over in my head for a few weeks, it dawned on me that all the quirky stories I've been reading on reddit for years, even the believable ones, are fake. Part of this realization was actually posting a number of fake stories and getting some very highly upvoted comments. That many people, journalists especially, seem to read twitter content with a default-true instead of a defaul-false assumption is scary to me.
- indrora 4y agoThey didn't watch Arthur[1] then. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWdD206eSv0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWdD206eSv0
- cm2187 4y agoOne more illustration that the demand for racism exceeds the supply.
- Mountain_Skies 4y agoOnly if you define racism in a singular direction. There's plenty of racism to go around, just not the kind that's fashionable to point out.
- throwaway8582 4y agoExactly. When these sorts of acts are committed by non-whites, they disappear quickly from the news cycle and the race of the perpetrator is not mentioned or not emphasized. Anyone even remember the name of the black man with a history of racist posts that killed 6 and injured 62 during the Waukesha Christmas parade last year? Didn't think so
- lern_too_spel 4y agoAnybody remember if that black man was a participant in a community of racists? Didn't think so. There's a difference in policy between handling a lone nutcase and racist groups.
- throwaway8582 4y agoThese "hate hoaxes" are quite common. A few of the more prominent examples from recent years include Jussie Smollett, the Rolling Stone rape story, Yasmin Seweid, and Covington Catholic. Come to think of it, it seems like most of the major stories about some racist or sexist incident turn out to be false. It's not surprising that people do this, given how much value modern society places on "victimhood" and being a member of some oppressed group. What's more worrying is the tendency of the media and society to accept these accusations uncritically and jump on the bandwagon to condemn the alleged wrongdoer.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- brnaftr361 4y agoCould this be a grievance studies[0] sort of arrangement? Was 'Mohamad' a real person or was he a sockpuppet for fringe research? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair
- TraceWoodgrains 4y agoHe’s real enough to have appeared as the first author on a couple of apolitical peer-reviewed publications in his field. I don’t know what possessed him to do this but he definitely looks to be real.
- tootie 4y agoI have noticed a really strong uptick in posts and comments specifically about race-based policy. Politics isn't necessarily off-topic for HN but this particular topic almost feels like it's being actively promoted.
- BTCOG 4y agoOf course it is, for the same reason it would be a trending topic on Twitter.
- warinukraine 4y ago
- BTCOG 4y agoMost everything on the internet is a falsehood prepped up and bolstered for clout. Even much of the stuff you see here bragging about starting a SaaS or whatever, for clicks and likes. Instagram pictures are faked. The happiness, is faked. Much of the conversation on Twitter is astroturfed and botted to such an extent to farm likes and narratives. What's disturbing is all the fake is spilling right out into real life nowadays. Influencers walking around filming everywhere and fully believing they're celebrities in their own right, and with a matching entirely different off camera/off public view personality to boot. We have William Gibson novels nearly coming to life a few decades later. Celebrity and influencer obsession and the itch and the need for that dopamine hit to go viral. It's a disease.
- stjohnswarts 4y agoBeing that academia heavily leans more liberal (in western countries at least) how such a story could explode even if it was fake because of audience bias to "confirming what they already knew" even if they didn't really know it. It didn't pass the smell test with me though, as in my experience the bias was much more subtle and less bias at the lower end (post docs, papers, collaborations) and more bias on the upper end "glass ceiling" (full professorships, flagship universities, academic governing bodies)
- FerociousTimes 4y agoI had my doubts too about the story esp the part where he claimed to have had sent 100 applications for open postdoc positions in a very niche area of research; namely "Plant Biology", which raised my suspicions, and that's why I was instead more interested in the conversation around the topic itself, and I must say that I was a bit disappointed with a few responses that I came across in that thread; where a few people argued that it was OK to discriminate against people of different cultural backgrounds, and they made grand assumptions about those people's religiosity based solely on their birth name, and cited potential conflicts in the workplace arising from that specific consideration, which needless to say is a very absurd notion altogether. Even though most of these opinions weren't favorable with the general audience citing the downvotes, one in particular caught my attention where a denouncement of cultural favoritism in the hiring process where applicants from specific backgrounds were given priority while others esp of Muslim background were treated with suspicions and animosity, seemed to sit well with a given segment of the audience here, which is a testament to the pervasive nature of bias, discrimination, bigotry and intolerance that some people still hold in the workplace toward other minorities, and that we still have a lot of work to do in that area to ensure equality, inclusion, diversity and overall progress for all of us in our professional life.
- crackercrews 4y ago> the pervasive nature of bias, discrimination, bigotry and intolerance that some people still hold in the workplace toward other minorities Not just minorities. There's bias, discrimination, bigotry, and intolerance toward white people too. Heavy-handed affirmative action, for one thing.