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Comment by abc_lisper | Hacker News Reader

Before a knee jerk response of unconscious bias, which I’m in no way denying, it is more important to know how this research was conducted. What about the publications and references? It’s not like the job is flipping burgers - postdoctoral positions are extremely specific and people tend to know each other within a couple of hops on their social network.

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Wouldn't that in all cases benefit the real CV over the fake one? (because if you started to look up the fake person you'd find less useful results than for the real name, which would turn up real publications)

No.

You’d find more information on the real person.

But the news might be bad.

Indeed it is not a rigours experiment by any stretch of the imagination. But the difference in scale in response (and the fact his profile looks earnest) we have an interesting data point on bias in academia.

Well, apparently we don't have an interesting data point since this "experiment" seems likely to be a fabrication - https://tracingwoodgrains.substack.com/p/viral-racism-in-aca...

I wouldn't say that all postdocs are extremely specific in a field like plant biology. You might require the postdoc to be knowledgable of certain lab practices only for example.

In fact, in many cases it is very unlikely that you will find a postdoc that has done work in a cutting-edge niche area that a professor is interested in, so the pool of candidates even globally is not sufficient. Your best hope is to find a postdoc in an adjacent area who you can train up on what you are doing.

So they favored the made up person?

Plausable if someone has a bad reputation

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