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Is this psychologist racist and should he be sacked?
Superbass
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So as some of you may have read/heard about, a popular blogger at Psychology Today, Satoshi Kanazawa, recently made a blog post that was promptly removed, titled Why Black Women are Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women (the title was changed before the post was outright removed from Psychology Today).
Of course, the post caused a firestorm, not least because Kanazawa attributed the difference to evolutionary factors -- i.e. the "only thing I can think of" to explain the difference would be higher average testosterone among Africans. The post is currently under investigation by the LSE, where he teaches. "the University of London Union Senate (the umbrella union for 22 colleges within the University of London), the Union’s legislative body representing over 120,000 students, voted unanimously in favour of calling for a campaign for the dismissal of evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa, Reader in Management at the LSE, and to condemn his poor research." ()
So, is he racist? Should he be fired?
For me, the answer is a very firm yes and yes.
Why? Because he broached an unpopular or politically inflammatory topic, and gave uncomfortable answers? No. Because he ignored data that contradicted his hypothesis, offered meager analysis, and in general seemed to be using poor science to justify racist personal belief. It is one thing to do bad science -- in and of itself a serious offense for a professor and researcher at a prestigious institution -- it is another entirely to do bad science in the service of advancing discriminatory and harmful beliefs. That is far more heinous.
So, what did he do wrong, exactly? This is where it gets long, so hit the TL;DR if you want
First, he excluded data that didn't support his theory. The study he based his conclusions on involved interviewers measuring many features of adolescents and young adults on a large-scale longitudinal study following young adolescents to adulthood.
"Objective" attractiveness (according to the interviewer) was measured at 4 different times in the life of the subject. Kanazawa used the first three times, but not the fourth -- the one when the subjects are all adults. In the fourth wave, black women were not rated less attractive than other groups.
His statistical analysis for arriving at his "latent attractiveness factor" is also utterly opaque, simply pointing out that he did factor analysis to arrive at his results, and he also bizarrely claims that factor analysis removes all possible measurement error(?!).
From a Sci Am post criticizing this farce:
Further, there was little consensus among the interviewers, with poor agreement between the attractiveness ratings of the same subjects from wave to wave -- even including from wave 3 to wave 4, when the subjects should all be essentially done developing (the correlation here was actually the worst -- probably because as adults, attractiveness ratings likely became more influenced by the personal sexual attraction of the interviewer to the subject, and therefore more subjective, but who knows for sure).
Further still, the director of the Add Health project herself responded following the controversy, offering these remarks:
Second, he offered zero analysis of the falsely alleged "objective" nature of the attractiveness ratings. The fact that Kanazawa never even considered that socialization, cultural norms, etc, could possibly influence these ratings is frankly absurd. We know that standards of beauty differ from region to region, culture to culture, and throughout time.
Third, Kanazawa points out that black women are still less attractive than other groups net BMI and intelligence (though never makes it clear if his charts show the net-BMI and intelligence results or simply the raw mean), but doesn't consider other measurable variables, like SES and geography.
Finally, he attributes the difference to testosterone differences, because of course if it were an issue of increased mutation load it would affect the rating of black men as well (also he bizarrely and un-evidencedly asserts mutation load is unattractive as an indicator of poor genetic health, which makes me question his understanding of genetics).
As it turns out, this un-cited statement of higher testosterone among black women may in fact be the opposite of reality:
Even further, he doesn't bother to elaborate on why high testosterone would evolutionarily have an impact on attractiveness. Are black women less fertile or less healthy because of higher testosterone (assuming they actually had higher testosterone, of course)? This rather flies in the face of the popular notion of the full-figured black woman with full lips, large rump, etc., -- i.e. a woman displaying heightened traits of fertility.
This just pissed me off on so many levels. First, because it was offensive and racist, and the pervasive demeaning of black women in our society is bad enough already. Second, because anytime someone tries to justify their racist bullshit with science is especially despicable. Third, because it was shitty science and as a fan of evolutionary psychology, I hate the douchebags like Kanazawa who reinforce the popular misconception that it is a refuge for scientific racists and sexists.
I hope he is stripped of his position, his credentials, and suffers tremendous indignity. He has a long history of trying to scientifically support racist conclusions, and this should be the end of him, academically.
TL;DR -- He ignored the most relevant evidence to his question; blatantly mischaracterized (lied about?) the variables he analyzed; hid relatively small variance with opaque factor analysis and misrepresented about the merits of the technique; mischaracterized the lack of consensus among measurements; failed to analyze the full variety of confounding variables; failed to seriously consider socio-cultural explanations out-of-hand, without justification; offered a hypothesis which seems to be based on a false statement (black women do not have higher testosterone); offered no interpretation of the mechanism of effect of his hypothesis.
And yes, this was a blog, not a peer reviewed paper -- but his papers seem to be little better than this, judging by his academic reception -- but there's a fine line between the informality of blogging, and using blogging as a shield from criticism when presenting biased and poor reasoning. I think he crossed that line by claiming repeatedly objectivity and factual accuracy on an explosive and hurtful topic.
Of course, the post caused a firestorm, not least because Kanazawa attributed the difference to evolutionary factors -- i.e. the "only thing I can think of" to explain the difference would be higher average testosterone among Africans. The post is currently under investigation by the LSE, where he teaches. "the University of London Union Senate (the umbrella union for 22 colleges within the University of London), the Union’s legislative body representing over 120,000 students, voted unanimously in favour of calling for a campaign for the dismissal of evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa, Reader in Management at the LSE, and to condemn his poor research." ()
So, is he racist? Should he be fired?
For me, the answer is a very firm yes and yes.
Why? Because he broached an unpopular or politically inflammatory topic, and gave uncomfortable answers? No. Because he ignored data that contradicted his hypothesis, offered meager analysis, and in general seemed to be using poor science to justify racist personal belief. It is one thing to do bad science -- in and of itself a serious offense for a professor and researcher at a prestigious institution -- it is another entirely to do bad science in the service of advancing discriminatory and harmful beliefs. That is far more heinous.
So, what did he do wrong, exactly? This is where it gets long, so hit the TL;DR if you want
First, he excluded data that didn't support his theory. The study he based his conclusions on involved interviewers measuring many features of adolescents and young adults on a large-scale longitudinal study following young adolescents to adulthood.
"Objective" attractiveness (according to the interviewer) was measured at 4 different times in the life of the subject. Kanazawa used the first three times, but not the fourth -- the one when the subjects are all adults. In the fourth wave, black women were not rated less attractive than other groups.
His statistical analysis for arriving at his "latent attractiveness factor" is also utterly opaque, simply pointing out that he did factor analysis to arrive at his results, and he also bizarrely claims that factor analysis removes all possible measurement error(?!).
From a Sci Am post criticizing this farce:
Sci Am wrote:Kaufman and other bloggers also address Kanazawa's painful contortion of factor analysis, which I agree is laughable. He looks at three measurements of the same test taken at three different time points and creates a one-factor model, with the one factor being "objective attractiveness." This is, of course, founded on the principle that an attractiveness rating handed out by interviewers in a study on adolescent health and well-being is actually measuring something that we can agree is "objective attractiveness."
He then says that by merging these three measurements for each interviewee into one factor, he can use factor analysis to get at that "objective attractiveness" while minimizing any error. This is just plain false. Factor analysis cannot get rid of measurement error. If it could, we'd all be using it all the time, and we'd get rid of all measurement error, and scientific studies wouldn't need to be replicated.
Further, there was little consensus among the interviewers, with poor agreement between the attractiveness ratings of the same subjects from wave to wave -- even including from wave 3 to wave 4, when the subjects should all be essentially done developing (the correlation here was actually the worst -- probably because as adults, attractiveness ratings likely became more influenced by the personal sexual attraction of the interviewer to the subject, and therefore more subjective, but who knows for sure).
Further still, the director of the Add Health project herself responded following the controversy, offering these remarks:
‘He's mischaracterizing the objectiveness of the data — that's wrong. It's subjective. The interviewers' data is subjective,’ said Harris, who is also a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Second, he offered zero analysis of the falsely alleged "objective" nature of the attractiveness ratings. The fact that Kanazawa never even considered that socialization, cultural norms, etc, could possibly influence these ratings is frankly absurd. We know that standards of beauty differ from region to region, culture to culture, and throughout time.
Third, Kanazawa points out that black women are still less attractive than other groups net BMI and intelligence (though never makes it clear if his charts show the net-BMI and intelligence results or simply the raw mean), but doesn't consider other measurable variables, like SES and geography.
Finally, he attributes the difference to testosterone differences, because of course if it were an issue of increased mutation load it would affect the rating of black men as well (also he bizarrely and un-evidencedly asserts mutation load is unattractive as an indicator of poor genetic health, which makes me question his understanding of genetics).
As it turns out, this un-cited statement of higher testosterone among black women may in fact be the opposite of reality:
Kanazawa surmises that Black women's lower attractiveness might be due to low estrogen and high testosterone. Yet, high estrogen levels and low testosterone is a leading cause of fibroids, which significantly impact Black women, especially Black women who are overweight. Also, Black women have been found to have higher levels of estrogen in a study on breast cancer.
Even further, he doesn't bother to elaborate on why high testosterone would evolutionarily have an impact on attractiveness. Are black women less fertile or less healthy because of higher testosterone (assuming they actually had higher testosterone, of course)? This rather flies in the face of the popular notion of the full-figured black woman with full lips, large rump, etc., -- i.e. a woman displaying heightened traits of fertility.
This just pissed me off on so many levels. First, because it was offensive and racist, and the pervasive demeaning of black women in our society is bad enough already. Second, because anytime someone tries to justify their racist bullshit with science is especially despicable. Third, because it was shitty science and as a fan of evolutionary psychology, I hate the douchebags like Kanazawa who reinforce the popular misconception that it is a refuge for scientific racists and sexists.
I hope he is stripped of his position, his credentials, and suffers tremendous indignity. He has a long history of trying to scientifically support racist conclusions, and this should be the end of him, academically.
TL;DR -- He ignored the most relevant evidence to his question; blatantly mischaracterized (lied about?) the variables he analyzed; hid relatively small variance with opaque factor analysis and misrepresented about the merits of the technique; mischaracterized the lack of consensus among measurements; failed to analyze the full variety of confounding variables; failed to seriously consider socio-cultural explanations out-of-hand, without justification; offered a hypothesis which seems to be based on a false statement (black women do not have higher testosterone); offered no interpretation of the mechanism of effect of his hypothesis.
And yes, this was a blog, not a peer reviewed paper -- but his papers seem to be little better than this, judging by his academic reception -- but there's a fine line between the informality of blogging, and using blogging as a shield from criticism when presenting biased and poor reasoning. I think he crossed that line by claiming repeatedly objectivity and factual accuracy on an explosive and hurtful topic.
Superbass on
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Maybe he's a racist. I don't know. I don't see why he should be fired...I mean, has he done something illegal?
If you don't like what he says, then don't listen to him. That's my opinion.
You could actually read the OP, you know.
I even included a handy TL;DR
See also: "quick-twitch" people in sports.
The blogpost itself is a terrible example of science.
Should he be fired? That's up to Psychology Today. Since they yanked the blogpost almost immediately that seems to be the likely outcome, but who knows what their rules and metrics are about a thing like this.
Of course, he could always chalk it and all his other posts up to a "Socio-Psychological Experiment" if he wanted to and probably keep his job.
It's almost too overtly racist to be taken seriously. I tend to find subtle racism more horrifying, while the people screaming about inferiority of a given race, well, just make me shake my head and walk away.
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I'm not even trying to be snarky -- but did you actually read the OP?
Because it's really a lot more than that, and it's not really ambiguous in how I phrased it.
It's one thing to not find black women generally that attractive, personally -- it's another entirely to assert that black women are objectively less physically attractive, proven by science, and that this difference is due to the genetic inferiority of black women. Which is pretty much what he did, using horrible science to try to justify his horribly racist perspective.
Although in answer to your question: probably, yeah, depending on how you define racism.
To the the point where its legitimacy as a science should be questioned.
Again.
I disagree!
I like evo psych and I think it's an interesting discipline!
However idiots like this keep giving it a horrible reputation even though they are a vocal but very very small minority.
Hell, one of his papers was rebuked by a group of 35 prominent evolutionary psychologists who all wrote a big letter basically saying this guy is a hack and a shit-stirrer and a racist. Even the dreaded Pinkers signed onto it.
Do I think the discipline directs too much time towards issues of sex and gender? Yeah. Is it sort of understandable? Yes. Does a lot of really tame and not offensive research on gender and sex get buried in academic journals while the sexist stuff gets mainstreamed into Wired and Pop Sci? Yeah, but that's not the fault of the discipline, that's the fault of popular media and people's craving to have their bullshit stereotypes and bigotry affirmed by "science."
There's so much interesting work on psychology that has an eye towards evolution that gets no press whatsoever. And then asshats like this define the discipline for the public.
The conclusion that he falsified his way to makes him pretty much a grade A shitheel. I don't think he's going to have a job with Psychology Today for much longer. Or any other scientific publication, for that matter.
Also, directly off of the wikipedia article on this shining paragon of virtue (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Kanazawa):
From an article he wrote in March of 2011
"high-class prostitutes like Allie and Maggie have more in common with college professors, corporate executives, or poets than with the more affordable and visible members of their profession...[p]rostitution is evolutionarily familiar, because mating is evolutionarily familiar and prostitutes (at least the classy ones) are no different from other women, whom men also have to pay – not in cash payments but in dinners and movies, gifts, flowers, chocolates, and motor oil..."
This guy got turned down for some dates in his past, methinks.
Charge of rationalization. Cut that shit out. Right now.
Honestly, though, I've heard many people make the same comparison. He's not alone in thinking this way. Dating is really not much different from prostitution. You're paying for gifts, food, events, etc. in order to get some sex.
OKtrends did a blog post about this using their data from the online dating site OKCupid and found that black women are indeed the least attractive race on their site, for men of all races. Anecdotal evidence perhaps, but evidence nonetheless.
This chart is particularly damning
And this is the full blog post
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-race-affects-whether-people-write-you-back/
It's ok to find some races unattractive, it really is. It doesn't make you a "terrible" person, you just don't get to choose who you are attracted to.
I'm not a racist, but I'm also not so insecure in my thoughts about race that one psychologist's work pisses me off (unlike some people).
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Doesn't change the fact that the results are what they are.
...or way more selective in their messaging. As said, that chart is not science.
The blogger is def trying to selectively present data that supports his personal beliefs, but then again, evolutionary psychology ololz.
The results are in no way indicative or scientific. Seriously.
If this chart is not science then what is it?
Data. Which is all good as long as you don't manipulate it to generalize a pseudo-scientific argument that doesn't start with "So far in the past for OkCupid users we can observe that".
Its statistical data for the user base of an online data service. We have no way of interpreting it in order to draw conclusions for anything other than that population, because we don't know exactly how this population samples the population of the world.
Someone with a lot more training in statistics than me could figure it out if OKCupid gave him all their data though.
Edit: beat by zeeny.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I'm not going to get into the usual evolutionary psychology debates, but suffice it to say I think it's an early field with lots of potential value that is marred by pseudoscience in the manner of almost all early scientific fields.
Don't clutter up the thread with this sort of dipshittery. If you're only interested in impugning other posters' motives, this is not the thread for you.
I don't fault the man for trying to explain his observation, that's the purpose of science, and to be honest I think unpopular conclusions are the most important ones to reach. I fault the man for not realizing his observations were biased and unscientific and then deliberately ignoring data that disagreed with him.
Fair enough.
Are you not seeing the bits where he manipulates his data to fit his hypothesis; the very marker of un scientific or not science.
There is a statement pro porting that females are generally more attractive than males. Wait what why are all women not lesbians and why are gay men attracted to men. WTF! It's almost like he only looked at what is attractive to a heterosexual male, a heterosexual racist male.
By selectively using images of anime I can then support a false argument that the Japanese are misogynistic racist arseholes. The underlying premise that yellow people are barbarian orcs. . . It's not science.
"I think I can comment on this because I used to live above the Baby Doll Lounge, a topless bar that was once frequented by bikers in lower Manhattan."
Whoa whoa whoa
Let's not rule out that the Japanese are misogynistic racist assholes just yet.
Incorrect. Literally everything he claimed was unsupported.
Yes, yes, we've all seen that. However, extrapolating from messaging data on a single dating website with a non-representative user base to the rest of the country is not scientific. For one, it's hard to separate messaging strategies from perceived attractiveness, and of course OKCupid's userbase tends to be a certain demographic subset of the broader population. Also, messaging differences could also be due to, say, the black women on OKC being more dissimilar from other users. Let's say that black women have an average SES lower than the rest of the users, and a higher religiosity. They're almost certainly going to have mean lower match rates as a result, and poorer response rates.
It would be interesting to have a comparison chart between mean match rate and message response rate.
Secondly, it would be one thing if Kanazawa had said "black women seem to be perceived to be less attractive" and then went about trying to answer that question.
Instead, he said "black women are objectively less attractive" (a conclusion not supported by the data he based his conclusion on, and which he manipulated to look more favorable with sloppy statistics), and this is because of their genetic inferiority.
That's an entirely different kettle of fish. I would not be surprised if black women were perceived as less attractive in Western society than other groups -- although the Add Health survey at least doesn't seem to support that conclusion. However, we know how black women get negatively stereotyped and demeaned in our society, so there's a lot of explanations for how black women could be perceived as less attractive other than "they really are less attractive and they're less attractive because their genes make them unfeminine."
There's plenty of debate over how black women are perceived in the West, and plenty of black women are engaged in that discourse talking about how black women's beauty is demeaned/undervalued. Talking about good hair and color complex is nothing new.
Characterizing this as him coming under fire for saying something unpopular but true is a horrible and sloppy mischaracterization.
No but it probably does indicate you're prejudiced to some extent. I say this as someone who finds women of certain races more attractive than others. I'm self-aware enough to admit that my preferences have almost certainly been influenced by societal trends and prejudices that I've been exposed to, though. Can I control it? No, so I don't stress about it too much. But I don't pretend I'm immune from racism.
edit: Jacob addressed this.
I would love hear this guys explanation for why us white men are so unatractive on a evolutionary level.
PS. I yield the pasty white skin point.
This post mirrors my own thoughts. On a related note, I also think it's quite worrying that someone who has such a reputation for poor research would be able to hold a post at a university as prestigious as the LSE.
With Hauser and Kanazawa, it's been a bad year for psychology in the news.
God, I was so upset about the Hauser thing. I own his book, and in fact I rather enjoyed it.
Part of me thinks we need to start thinking of a way to revolutionize the system of academia we have in place, because I think the sociology of science that we've built up no longer lends itself well to the unbiased pursuit of knowledge.
Unless you have additional data from an outside source I think you are parsing the data incorrectly.
The white males are the stringiest in their responses to female requests. This would imply they have the option of being choosy (or they're acting counter productively) but I don't think we have enough to suggest a reason.
White men get the highest response rates of all races by far.
He should be fired for the nonsense about races and mutation loads alone. I don't care if he is a racist or not, this is just awful science.
This is true and a bit tragic.
On the other hand, you would need to spend a lot of time on the subject to get the average person to have a good idea of how evolution works.