Oh, wait a sec...
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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| What Does Bias Look Like? |
| 2011-02-15 |
| So my post on the liberal slant in academia has garnered what I believe to be a record number of comments, many, even most of them, pretty angry. And as I predicted, the positions are very much reversed from the normal take on such things. Conservatives are explaining how bias can be subtle and yet insidious; and liberal, many of them academics are saying that you can't simply infer bias from statistical underrepresentation, and sarcastically demanding to know whether I really think that people are asking candidates for physics professorships who they voted for in the last election. And perversely, the more you think you are just deciding on the objective facts, like the quality of their work, the more possible it is that you are actually discriminating; research finds that people are most likely to discriminate on the basis of both politics and race when they have some other information with which to generate a plausible excuse. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #7 Bias is B.S. In the old days, you just hired a person or relative if you liked or favored them and was done with it. The world didn't stop turning, lawyers weren't hearing the Cha-ching sound. Now, because of the Pettifoggers mucking up the works, everyone is running scared of litigation and too scared to hire anyone. LAW SCHOOLS SHOULD BE REGULATED, and only a certain number of lawyers should be produced in this country. We have so many lawyers, many of them aren't even employed. Nothing more dangerous than an out of work lawyer--they'll sue the pants of an unsuspecting victim just to keep from getting out of practice. |
| Posted by: Fire and Ice 2011-02-15 15:29 |
| #6 Most universities are extortion funded so of course people with an inverted morality and a sense of entitlement will be more comfortable there. I hope as the bubble in higher education bursts and the market floods in, they'll scuttle like cock-roaches in torchlight. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2011-02-15 11:41 |
| #5 many of them academics are saying that you can't simply infer bias from statistical under representation, Except the very same lefties who today refute this as evidence of bias used exactly that argument to shove through FTFY |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2011-02-15 11:12 |
| #4 Bias looked like this before he died. Oh, wait a sec... |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2011-02-15 11:10 |
| #3 Karl, While I am a liberal, calling these academic lefties liberals makes my blood boil. THEY ARE NOT LIBERALS. Freaking look at the classic definition of liberal in philosophy. The left and their media satraps have high jacked the term. If you want a clear example of bias/discrimination in academia, look at politically correct speak being used to muzzle opinions with which they disagree. Also look at all of the silly weenie programs they teach that offer no chance of employment when the degree is received. Finally look where all of those hoodlums and sociopaths from the weather underground and the SDS landed...in colleges teaching. James, Slow down there turbo, you're going to give yourself a stroke. Karl, Its these featherheads and their brainwashed spawn that voted for that dim light bulb and his cohorts in Washington. A freaking informed and educated society would never reelect Pelosi after all of her personal excesses in her last term. James, I think we now find those who call them selves liberals are being shoved to the right by the creep further and further left of the left. |
| Posted by: James Carville/Karl Rove 2011-02-15 10:28 |
| #2 many of them academics are saying that you can't simply infer bias from statistical under representation, Except the very same lefties who today refute this as evidence of bias used exactly that argument to shove through forced busing in the 60s and 70s. It's about POWER. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2011-02-15 09:08 |
| #1 In the media, the most insidious form of bias is the stories that they ignore. In academia, it might well be more of a "birds of a feather flocking together" thing than any kind of outright conspiracy. However, if networking plays a role in getting hired at those levels, then the circles one runs in can lead to an open door or a closed one--if "the right people" don't know you. |
| Posted by: eLarson 2011-02-15 07:54 |