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Comment by throwaway74432 | Hacker News Reader

>>The study adds to a growing body of knowledge about what anonymizing funding applications can—and can’t—do. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), for example, experimented with concealing information about applicants’ identities from peer reviewers as part of an effort to understand why Black applicants are 35% less likely than white researchers to receive grants. The results were mixed—Black applicants’ scores did not improve, but those for white researchers decreased—and some experts were skeptical about whether the reviewers truly didn’t know the identities of the applicants.

Humans are such amazing pattern matchers. Even with the identities concealed, the reviewers were able to figure out who was black and discriminate against them in favor of white applicants. This level of systemic racism is absolutely dumbfounding.

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Isn't it statistically likely that the average black applicant's grant application was actually just worse?

We know blind tryouts for orchestras result in fewer black and disadvantaged students getting accepted for a similar reason. They have, on average fewer resources and less support. So they simply, on average, perform worse than their white and affluent counterparts.

The reviewers needn't be racist to see these results.

>Even with the identities concealed, the reviewers were able to figure out who was black and discriminate against them in favor of white applicants.

That's one possible explanation; another is that the black applicants were just not as good, on average.

The explanation for that, in turn, could be that systemic racism in education in the past has left black applicants less well prepared than other applicants. It doesn't have to be innate group-level differences in intelligence, which is politically unsayable but nevertheless also a possible explanation for the difference.

If they knew that blacks have less resources and are therefore on average worse applicants as a result, then they knew that a bad application statistically meant a black applicant. So by not picking the worse application, they were in effect being statistically racist.

I think you're kidding, because this reasoning means (a) assuming a priori that blacks will do noticeably worse and (b) deliberately choosing worse applications, both of which are crazy. At least, it's the kind of convoluted joke I'd enjoy making to certain friends who know my real thoughts on the matter.

But I can't really tell.

It's not crazy to assume that people with less resources and support will do worse. The logic is sound and its in fact the standard explanation (along with discrimination) as to why marginalized groups do worse.

>The logic is sound

It's really, really not. You have come to the conclusion that grant deciders should deliberately choose worse applications based on a series of shaky assumptions, including that black applicants have had less support and resources, that this will cause them to produce conspicuously worse applications, and most glaringly of all, that this assumed effect dominates all other considerations!

I hope you're just trolling me and don't seriously believe this.

Honestly I think that you are trolling me, but I am trying to assume good faith. In your first reply to me, you said "[an explanation is that] systemic racism in education in the past has left black applicants less well prepared than other applicants." Now you are saying this is a shaky hypothesis and has minimal impact on the applications?

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