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0 pointskeerthiko8y ago0 comments

A scientific approach to discussing something is not about upholding your view with select studies that back your viewpoint. It's about proposing a hypothesis, then collecting and presenting unbiased studies, observations and data for all sides, and then supporting final inferences and conclusions.

The last part is "the message" of a scientific publication (the "why I worked on/wrote this").

Why was his memo unscientific? 1. His choice of data presentation was almost exclusively for his side of the hypothesis, of the form "women are biologically inclined to X" without including any of the (vast corpus of) counter-studies* that directly offset many of his core supporting arguments.

2. Even if his arguments were sufficiently sound (which is unlikely as per 1.), his conclusions were a bit of a quantum leap from his "sourced" claims to "this is unfair, divisive, bad for business" (as per the TLDR). He pretty much just decided that for himself. There were few or no studies/data/observations to support that crucial step.

*going to piggyback off the sources linked in this slate article: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2017/08/07/the_google_a...

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dqv8y ago· 1 in thread

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2017/08/07/the_google_a...

> the sources linked in this slate article

I couldn't find any counter-studies in the article you linked. I tried traversing the sources, but those sources don't have any studies either. Is that the link you intended to post?

keerthikoOP8y ago

You are correct, it was my mistake. The medium article (posted elsewhere and often in response to this) counters several of the points and is reasonably cited. However, I noticed that there are few responses to #1 (the medium author writes "I’ll leave that to someone else" and I haven't found anyone else take that up).

I'll grant that I had a kneejerk reaction of "that can't be accurate" and assumed there must be lots of literature to back me up, but it isn't easy to find it. Personally I neither support nor oppose this manifesto, but I think given the very expectable backlash and damage potential, drawing such concrete conclusions without stronger grounds was a bit too risque to be considered scientific.

jhanschoo8y ago

Actually, his conclusion itself was also sourced: his main contention was that Google should reconsider its positive discrimination policies, and he cited a WSJ article reporting that positive discrimination can lead to more gender strife.

I think the standard that you have set for the author expressing these opinions is unfairly high, and the bar that you have set for yourself for criticizing him for expressing that is unfairly low. You criticize that the author has cherry-picked his sources; you now have to support that claim by showing the deluge of counter-studies that show that it is not true that women are inclined to X personality. I've checked the Slate article and it doesn't link to sources that show that. In fact, the first paragraph of the article links to articles that agree with that WSJ article and with the author that discrim. leads to gender strife.

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