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Unemployed Black Woman Pretends to be White, Job Offers Skyrocket (2012)
- lightyrs 13y agoCorrelation does not imply causation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation#Examples_of_illogically_inferring_causation_from_correlation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_cau...
- lightyrs 13y agoLook, I understand many of you are upset by this, however, there are ways to prove causation — it's just a lot more complicated than this. Here's a primer: http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/if-correlation-doesnt-imply-causation-then-what-does/?utm_content=buffer69ba9&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/if-correlation-doesnt-impl...
- eblume 13y agoNo but it is cause for concern.
- kevinthew 13y agoThis has been confirmed in other studies -- that people with white sounding names do better than those with "black" sounding names on resumes, all things being equal. Our country is incredibly structurally racist is the moral of the story.
- TallGuyShort 13y agoAgreed, but it does sound like she was pretty careful in which factors in the experiment were allowed to vary, and unless she's exaggerating the numbers (which is hard to do when you enumerate specifics), that's a pretty significant change. I would be more sceptical if someone pointed out factors that might have varied anyway. edit: The comment about 'profile freshness' is intriguing, and possible an example of this.
- foobarbazqux 13y agoCausation implies correlation though. That is, correlation is a necessary condition for causation.
- api 13y agoAs I heard it explained once: correlation does not imply causation, but it does jump up and down and point and gesticulate wildly in its general direction.
- foobarbazqux 13y agoHa ha. To be fair, every time you hit reply, somebody dies within 3 seconds.
- a-priori 13y agohttp://xkcd.com/552/ http://xkcd.com/552/ See the mouseover text.
- doctorwho 13y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_cau... The counter assumption, that correlation proves causation, is considered a questionable cause logical fallacy in that two events occurring together are taken to have a cause-and-effect relationship. This fallacy is also known as cum hoc ergo propter hoc, Latin for "with this, therefore because of this", and "false cause". A similar fallacy, that an event that follows another was necessarily a consequence of the first event, is sometimes described as post hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin for "after this, therefore because of this").
- foobarbazqux 13y agoI think maybe you missed the parent comment?
- coldtea 13y agoAnd yet it's how we imply causation all the time. In real life, were we can also draw from other experiences and make our "experiments" more targeted (as opposed to some scientific study involving obscure correlations), correlation is the best measure of causation. So, while it might be the correct pedantic thing to say, in this correlation does very much imply causation. It's not like there are a lot of others, mysterious, factors at play here. Besides blanket epistemological statements, how about we also do a little thinking on individual cases and how it applies to them?
- lightyrs 13y agoSince we have so many fans of science on this site: http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/if-correlation-doesnt-imply-causation-then-what-does/?utm_content=buffer69ba9&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/if-correlation-doesnt-impl...
- rodgerd 13y agoSo if you burn your hand on a stove element, do you keep your hand there until you've derived a theory of how the element might be burning it from first principles, all the while chanting your mantra?
- lightyrs 13y agoNot at all. However, I also don't then post inflammatory pseudoscientific articles on the Internet with headlines like "White stove caused burns in man who was never burned by black stove." It's the current trend of bad science and lack of journalistic integrity that I'm taking issue with.
- codygman 13y agoWow... the implication that a white and black stove somehow mirror racism in anyway is laughable. It assumes that the only difference is color. It's disrespectful to the hundreds of years of institutional racism, denigration, and the current state of racial affairs in general.
- lightyrs 13y agoNo, that was your inference. The implication was that correlation does not equal causation.
- wpietri 13y agoCorrelation is correlated with causation. Which makes it worth paying attention to.
- chc 13y agoIf we're using strictly logic jargon, the statement "correlation does not imply causation" is true. If we're using the normal English definition of "imply," then the statement is very often false.
- ezy 13y agoThe problem with this mantra is that it is technically true, but, as a negative, leaves out the rest of the world. For example, Correlation also does not imply non-correlation. This is vacuous, of course, but it illustrates the problem with using this kind of shorthand to quickly dismiss something rather than investigate it. In truth, correlation does suggest causation, but not necessarily in the way one might expect. The WP article you linked goes into this. All too often, this canard is trotted out to avoid thinking about where the causation might actually lay, rather than taking something seriously. It is precisely this that the shorthand is meant to prevent! Correlation does not imply causation, therefore you have to think carefully about the causation chain when considering two correlated events -- you can't just assume the causation isn't elsewhere, and you most definitely cannot assume it does not exist at all!
- lightyrs 13y agoYes, precisely! It is possible to prove causation, however, this submission does not do so. Please read this primer: http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/if-correlation-doesnt-imply-causation-then-what-does/?utm_content=buffer69ba9&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/if-correlation-doesnt-impl...
- jrs99 13y agoThanks for the link. I haven't heard this one yet in Internet forums. Now I can win arguments by throwing it around with abandon.
- jgs1 13y agoIsn't it likely that Monster has some sort of "freshness" indicator that might rank new profiles higher than old ones that haven't been updated in a while? A better experiment would have been to create two similar profiles at the same time with the only difference being the name and diversity questionnaire.
- anon808 13y agoAt some point her real resume was fresh, and it doesn't sound like she experienced the same level of response then that she received on her fake fresh resume. Of course maybe the insurance industry wasn't hiring as eagerly when her real resume was fresh. Oh well, let's just assume it's experiment error and her conclusions are baseless. There, I feel better.
- nashequilibrium 13y agoI actually added this link to run an experiment. I have been playing around a lot with the nltk package and after I saw the one link similar to this on the front page, I remembered that this story got flagged for not being techie enough. So now that we are getting a discussion going I can run sentiment analyses on the comments to text for variances on different levels.
- jgs1 13y agoI understand discrimination is real and I wasn't implying otherwise. But I also worked in the past for a monster competitor and I can say that at least at the company I worked for "new" candidates were promoted much more than existing candidates. Hiring managers would much rather see an email titled "20 new candidates for your XYZ position!" than "20 people who haven't updated their profile in 2 years for your XYZ position". Creating two profiles at the same time would eliminate this issue, although employers might then wonder why 2 candidates have the exact same profiles...
- apsec112 13y ago"The worst thing to post or upvote is something that's intensely but shallowly interesting. Gossip about famous people, funny or cute pictures or videos, partisan political articles, etc. If you let that sort of thing onto a news site, it will push aside the deeply interesting stuff, which tends to be quieter." - http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html I'm pretty sure that personal experiences of discrimination qualify as "intensely but shallowly interesting" content. It's "intense" because racial/sexual/etc. discrimination is a very charged topic that people get passionate about. (Not that this is bad, it's just the current state of things.) It's "shallowly interesting" because it doesn't teach us anything except "some companies are racist sometimes", which everyone already knows. If companies in field X are especially racist, that might be interesting. If specific company Y was really racist, that might be interesting. If people were more or less racist under circumstance Z, that might be interesting, etc. But since this kind of content doesn't name specifics, all we can take away is "some employers are racist sometimes under some circumstances" (according to one person, whose account might or might not be completely accurate). That hasn't been new information since, well, ever. Even if you went back to 1900, everyone would already know this, it's just that most people would agree with it, instead of objecting like modern-day people would.
- anon808 13y agoAgreed. Let's just ignore this. Next article please.
- codygman 13y agoThis attitude reeks of white privilege, although I used to have an opinion similar to it. I recommend spending some time here: http://racismschool.tumblr.com/post/16976192868/white-privilege-preferential-treatment http://racismschool.tumblr.com/post/16976192868/white-privil...
- wpietri 13y agoI strongly disagree. Not everybody knows that racism exists, and not everybody agrees that it is a significant barrier to hiring. Further, it is not a solved problem, so it is well worth talking about it so we can solve it. Even if you don't believe that it should be solved as a societal problem (I do), this is a sign to hiring managers that they can do especially well by looking for the sorts of people that many companies tend to miss.
- ck2 13y agoMeanwhile the supreme court continues to attempt to rollback protections for equal treatment like society is all grown up now. ps. this article seems like dejavu, I swear I've read it before here
- wpietri 13y agoSince there were only 5 comments, I was hoping to get in before my fellow white people began the search for every possible explanation other than the obvious one. Alas, no. Her experience is exactly in line with previous studies on this. E.g.: http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html And plenty of other people have stories like this to tell. For example, this white guy with a gender-ambiguous name who suddenly got a lot more attention when he added "Mr" to his resume: http://qz.com/103453/i-understood-gender-discrimination-after-i-added-mr-to-my-resume-and-landed-a-job/ http://qz.com/103453/i-understood-gender-discrimination-afte... And it's not just resumes. Bias also happens in real-world auditions: http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/A94/90/73G00/ http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/A94/90/73G00/ The truth is that most of us are unconsciously biased against and for all sorts of people. I sure am. I didn't used to admit that, even to myself, but then I took some of the Project Implicit tests: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/ https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/ The question isn't whether white people have some sort of in-group bias. People have all sorts of in-group biases, and white people are people. The question is what we do about them. More specifically, the question for you is what you, as a human, are doing about your biases. And the question for me is what I'm doing about mine.
- jeremyjh 13y agoYes exactly and this is why we need to read these kind of things. It seems one of the more challenging aspects of racism today is that is so subtle that most people with racial bias are not even really aware of it themselves.
- burgerz 13y ago>my fellow white people began the search for every possible explanation contrary to your idea of white people having white guilt or whatever and trying to justify this, the posts in this thread indicate (rightly) that discrimination exists and that you deal with it and get over it.
- codygman 13y agoAre you discriminated against? If you're a white male (like me), this is too funny!
- jeremyjh 13y agoThis has been studied more formally as well, here is one paper from 2004: http://scholar.harvard.edu/mullainathan/files/emilygreg.pdf http://scholar.harvard.edu/mullainathan/files/emilygreg.pdf They found only a 50% increase in call-backs for "white sounding" names, still I think this story is quite credible.
- jamesjguthrie 13y agoI want to see results of an experiment like this done in the UK for a standard call centre/restaurant/shop/etc. kind of job. All those places have Equal Opportunities Policies, which some say, means they will prioritise anybody over healthy, straight, white, British, non-religious males. I want to know if it's true.
- grannyg00se 13y ago"If you don’t believe that racism in the job market is real, then please read this article" Stopped reading. Yes, I believe racism, sexism, ageism, and a number of other isms in the job market are real. It's not a job market issue. It's a human being issue. As long as your resume has to get past a human then you're going to have all of those biases to contend with.
- wpietri 13y agoHuman being issues get solved through discussion and examination. Including self-examination. By ragequitting after the first paragraph, you're cheating yourself. However, this is a specifically a job market issue because as a society we have committed to making hiring reasonably fair. Also, these biases are not immutable; they change over time. For example, there was a strong anti-Irish bias in the 19th century in the US and England. So I think your "humans are flawed so shut up about injustice" routine is neither correct nor helpful.
- mynewwork 13y ago"She had no prior work experience and had applied for a clerical position, but was offered a higher post as an executive manager making close to six figures" Does this anecdote not sound crazy to anyone else? Racial discrimination by name is well documented in other studies, but her classmate's experience seems implausible.
- wpietri 13y agoI think the situation is crazy but the story is entirely plausible. It could happen in a good way. We've all met absurdly bright young hackers whose resumes haven't yet caught up with their talents. Or even proto-hackers; there are several people I've encouraged to get into the field because they obviously had the right inclinations and a background that would make them great. Maybe this hiring manager saw a lot of raw talent they thought they could put to work. I know a couple of people who ended up managers very young and were great at it. Or it could happen in a bad way. We can all think of people we're working with and said, "How in the world did they get that job?" Idiocy, venality, lust, nepotism, or even reasonable mistakes. And let's not forget the "B players hire C players" phenomenon. Either way, I am not shocked at all that things like that happen.
- rooshdi 13y agoHow does this get flagged off so quickly when there's a sexism article on the frontpage?
- DanBC 13y ago"Diversity information" should not be forwarded on to anyone except the statistician[1] in the personnel department who is creating charts to show that the company is making efforts to not exclude people. It's probably time that companies started asking for a different form of resume / CV - without any age, gender, sexuality, race, religion, or disability information on it. We could probably design a suitable experiment to satisfy everyone that the phenomena is real. I'd be interested to see what happens if 10 people send 3 CVs each for a company - same information but with "Mr Kim Johnson", "Mrs Kim Johnson", "Yolanda Johnson" swapped in for the name.
- mathattack 13y agoThis is a very true and real problem, and there is significant data and other studies to support her assertion. That said, the title is a little misleading as it's "Job Inquiries" that skyrocket, not offers. Of course it takes one to get the other....
- burgerz 13y agoemployers should be allowed to discriminate however they wish. forced equality leads to more inequality. but i love the comments saying she should call the justice department because she didn't get a job because "she was black" when all she did was used two different names.
- dennisgorelik 13y agoNew resume generally attracts more attention than resume that was posted long time ago. That could explain the difference.