Topic: Black scientists receive less funding that their white colleagues

[Kwisatz Haderach]

Personnally, I think the key is this comment  from the Science paper:

Small differences in access to research resources and mentoring during training or at the beginning
of a career may accumulate to become large between-group differences.

I write grant applications myself, and it is a very competitive field. Anything that will give you and edge over the competition makes a difference for reviewers. And if at the beginning of your career you were not in very good labs Ph. D.-wise, it may affect the quality of your follow-up post doctoral studies, hence a weaker publications record, etc.

I think it is a most likely explanation than the racist bullshit from reviewers I read in the thread.

So you're saying that systemic racist bullshit is more likely individual racist bullshit.

[EmergentSystem]

I think he means that something like the Matthew Effect could be responsible, rather than racism.

[Paddyjack]

Personnally, I think the key is this comment  from the Science paper:

Small differences in access to research resources and mentoring during training or at the beginning
of a career may accumulate to become large between-group differences.

I write grant applications myself, and it is a very competitive field. Anything that will give you and edge over the competition makes a difference for reviewers. And if at the beginning of your career you were not in very good labs Ph. D.-wise, it may affect the quality of your follow-up post doctoral studies, hence a weaker publications record, etc.

I think it is a most likely explanation than the racist bullshit from reviewers I read in the thread.

So you're saying that systemic racist bullshit is more likely individual racist bullshit.

Emegentsystem got it right.

And what I am saying is that unlike several people in the thread I'm questioning the conclusions of this paper and offering an alternative and IMO as much valid explanation. There could be several other reasons other than the inherent racism of the reviewers for this phenomena to happen.

[RichardFineMan]

'Insidious bias'
Black people make up 13% of the US population, but only 1.2% of lead researchers on biomedical studies are black.

does anyone see a problem with this? you would only expect 13% of bio researchers to be black if bio researchers are of average intelligent.

If bio researchers are higher on the intelligence bell curve, simply because there are not as many blacks as there are whites would cause that number to deviate significantly from 13%. Even if the capabilities between blacks and whites follow the same distribution.

What I'm trying to say (making up numbers for simplicity), is that if you need an IQ of 110 to be a researcher, and thats 1/5 people for both black and white because they are equally capable. If there are 10 times more white people (90% white), you would expect 1/50 blacks (2%) to be researchers. not 1/10 (10%) because even though the odds of a 110 IQ are the same, there are fewer occurrences simply because there are far less blacks than whites.

I'm sure I messed up the calculations here but you get the idea right?

[mkultra]

I'm glad I reread your post, because racism and bell curves have a long and troubled history, and I almost misunderstood.

The problem I see with your math is that 1/5 of white people vs. 1/5 of black people is the same proprtion as all white people vs. all black people.

Unless you're using applied statistics (which I have a hard time understanding, to be honest), I don't see why the proportions would change.

[Caffiene]

If there are 10 times more white people (90% white), you would expect 1/50 blacks (2%) to be researchers.

I think youre confusing percentage of the population with percentage of researchers.

You would expect only 10% * 1/5 = 2% of people from the population to be black researchers. You would also expect 90% * 1/5 = 18% of the population to be white researchers.

So you get 18% of the population are white researchers and 2% of the population are black researchers, but that still works out as 90% of researchers are white and 10% of researchers are black.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

'Insidious bias'
Black people make up 13% of the US population, but only 1.2% of lead researchers on biomedical studies are black.

does anyone see a problem with this? you would only expect 13% of bio researchers to be black if bio researchers are of average intelligent.

If bio researchers are higher on the intelligence bell curve, simply because there are not as many blacks as there are whites would cause that number to deviate significantly from 13%. Even if the capabilities between blacks and whites follow the same distribution.

What I'm trying to say (making up numbers for simplicity), is that if you need an IQ of 110 to be a researcher, and thats 1/5 people for both black and white because they are equally capable. If there are 10 times more white people (90% white), you would expect 1/50 blacks (2%) to be researchers. not 1/10 (10%) because even though the odds of a 110 IQ are the same, there are fewer occurrences simply because there are far less blacks than whites.

I'm sure I messed up the calculations here but you get the idea right?

On what are you basing the notion that researchers need above average intelligence?

[mkultra]

On what are you basing the notion that researchers need above average intelligence?

heh heh heh.

[RichardFineMan]

If there are 10 times more white people (90% white), you would expect 1/50 blacks (2%) to be researchers.

I think youre confusing percentage of the population with percentage of researchers.

You would expect only 10% * 1/5 = 2% of people from the population to be black researchers. You would also expect 90% * 1/5 = 18% of the population to be white researchers.

So you get 18% of the population are white researchers and 2% of the population are black researchers, but that still works out as 90% of researchers are white and 10% of researchers are black.

Thank you. This was an huge error on my part. Late night "statistics"....

[Jeremy's Sea]

Personnally, I think the key is this comment  from the Science paper:

Small differences in access to research resources and mentoring during training or at the beginning
of a career may accumulate to become large between-group differences.

I write grant applications myself, and it is a very competitive field. Anything that will give you and edge over the competition makes a difference for reviewers. And if at the beginning of your career you were not in very good labs Ph. D.-wise, it may affect the quality of your follow-up post doctoral studies, hence a weaker publications record, etc.

I think it is a most likely explanation than the racist bullshit from reviewers I read in the thread.

So you're saying that systemic racist bullshit is more likely individual racist bullshit.

Emegentsystem got it right.

And what I am saying is that unlike several people in the thread I'm questioning the conclusions of this paper and offering an alternative and IMO as much valid explanation. There could be several other reasons other than the inherent racism of the reviewers for this phenomena to happen.

I will look at the paper more closely again, but I didn't think that the conclusion is that the reviewers and the grant givers are inherently more racist. If anything this points to the larger issue in the referenced "Matthew Effect" (which I never had a name for before so thanks for that tidbit!). If black Americans are under represented and have less access to top tier institutions and it becomes a perpetuating cycle, much as poverty in inner city black communities, then there is a larger problem to be addressed. If intelligence and talent is equally distributed across ethnic and gender lines then we have effectively disenfranchised a significant number of intelligent contributors to scientific endeavors (as well as other fields). We should all be poorer for that.
This larger issue isn't one necessarily to be tackled by grant givers, they can only evaluate the merits of what is presented to them, however, it's just more evidence of the larger sociological problems on race that need to be addressed (so Chelovek can ignore the problems and dismiss them as poorly behaved black problems).