Guess who might be losing his job. May 23, 2011 Jill So tragic. (And no, it’s not because the PC Police got him. It’s because he was promoting racist opinions under the guise of scientific research, and compromising the academic credibility of LSE). Thanks, Xtina, for the update.
Don’t celebrate too soon. The student’s union has voted that he be fired, that means about as much as the students unions countrywide voting to reject the tuition fee increases. LSE is investigating, but since it was posted on his blog, and not officially published they may have a hard time actually firingt him. they’d have to prove he was negligent or racist in his actual work, not just his personal opinions. I suspect it’s going to be a hard fight.
Good for them. Academic freedom protects those who do unpopular research properly, but it does not protect those who do research (popular or not) improperly. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Kanazawa’s work was definitely Not Science. Not because of what conclusion he drew, but how he drew it from the evidence.
So my husband heard about this at work (he manages a restaurant) and asked me about it and I said, as Odin above and so many others have “this is bad science.” (this is actually a bad interpretation of others’ somewhat misappropriated to be possibly bad science, but I digress.) And he, a POC, said to me, “So everyone is mad because this is bad, wrong, incorrect science, right? They’re reacting this way because it’s both offensive AND the science is wrong?” and I said yes and he asked “what if this or something else is offensive BUT the science is correct?” And I didn’t know what to say, and it’s been bothering me ever since…what if the conclusion is offensive but it is, well, scientifically correct? What do I tell my husband? I’m sorry, I’m just so…lost here. Saying “well there will probably be other, ‘correct’ science in the future that will make a different more ‘correct’ conclusion…seems like an enormous cop-out.
PZ Myers ate Kanazawa’s “research” for lunch a couple of days ago. The data used has questionable confidence, and it may actually contradict Kanazawa’s conclusions — as if trying to “objectively” rate “beauty” isn’t a steaming pile of evo-psych brain turds in the first place.
bhuesca: …what if the conclusion is offensive but it is, well, scientifically correct? What do I tell my husband? I’m sorry, I’m just so…lost here. Saying “well there will probably be other, ‘correct’ science in the future that will make a different more ‘correct’ conclusion…seems like an enormous cop-out. Since psychology and sociology are social sciences, even very strong research can never speak for an entire population of diverse human beings with diverse life histories. Researchers often try to generalize, say by finding that in numerous tests “women do worse at math” or something like that. And then we see many women who excel at math, showing that statement to be false a lot of the time. Also, even something as measurable as math skills is influenced by social and cultural factors. When it comes to arbitrary things like “beauty” forget about it. Even if the research is sound, I don’t think it is anything to really just accept as it it. We have to always ask “why?” and do more research. That is what science is about.
Cate: Even if the research is sound, I don’t think it is anything to really just accept as it it. We have to always ask “why?” and do more research. That is what science is about. I think this is really key. To piggy-pack off of your comment, Cate, if the scientific research, conducted and interpreted properly, says that women are bad at math, Cate is absolutely correct in saying that we need to ask ‘why, rather than just accept it. Answering the ‘why’ with ‘because they just are’ is the cop-out. Considering what forces are allowing conclusions like that to be drawn should be the real focus. Thanks Cate!
This guy is hilarious. When I was an RA for a political science publication, we once got a submission for a paper claiming that the chances of the President being re-elected was a function of the birth rate in the spring of the election year. The paper was actually trying to argue for some sort of direct casual link between the number of births and votes for the incumbent. Needless to say it was a reject, but the entertainment value was priceless. Reading about Kanazawa’s “science” immediately reminded me of that. But I’m not sure if I’d want him to go away entirely (as opposed to just from LSE). My inability to take him seriously means that he provides me with a lot of entertainment value. A quick scan of his blog already provides some potential ‘biggest hits’: ‘How Is Steven Pinker NOT Like Michael Jordan?’ ‘Are All Women Essentially Prostitutes?’ ‘Criminals Look Different From Noncriminals’ (guess whose pic accompanies that one, yeah….) ‘The Second Amendment Right to Keep and Bear Nuclear Weapons’ ‘More on Why Stepfathers Kill Their Children’ ‘If Beautiful People Have Daughters, Why Do Posh and Becks Have Three Sons?’ ‘What If It Turns Out the Earth Was Flat After All?’
@Cate and @Vigee’ – Thank you. I just have been having problems putting this into words. I think my problem, too, has to do with the fact that my husband was not able to complete many years of education (and is not a native English speaker), and I have an advanced degree – but sometimes have a fear of explaining something ‘simply’ because I don’t want to make the appearance of ‘talking down’ to him…
He promoted sexist as well as racist opinions. It’s great that people are finally taking notice, but where were they when he was saying shit like: “‘Are All Women Essentially Prostitutes?” not to mention “As I explain in an earlier post, modern feminism is illogical, unnecessary, and evil.” Anyway, here’s a petition to get him fired from Psychology Today: http://www.change.org/petitions/fire-satoshi-kanazawa
“Even if the research is sound, I don’t think it is anything to really just accept as it it. We have to always ask “why?” and do more research. That is what science is about.” Pretty much. We don’t say “Caucasian men living in Wisconsin are 30% more likely to suffer a heart attack by the age of 45 than Caucasian men living anywhere else in the US,” shrug our shoulders, and move on. You check the methodology, try to duplicate the results, and then look for the causation if everything else is sound.
bhuesca: And I didn’t know what to say, and it’s been bothering me ever since…what if the conclusion is offensive but it is, well, scientifically correct? This is actually a very interesting question, and I think it is an important question to keep in mind if we want to stay intellectually honest. I am not convinced about the argument from Cate that we need to address “why” for this to be “good research”. “Why” is often an interesting area for further research, but just showing a correlation or effect can be very interesting and useful in some cases.
I would also like to note, that to me the article does not look so much racist as just a typical Kanazawa article, which goes like this: 1. Find some interesting information or statistics (in this case it was statistics taken from Add Health) 2. Use evo psych based theories and do some unfounded speculation and loose ramblings trying to explain (1).
@ matlun Where does Kanazawa’s bad methodology preclude simultaneous racism? His preferred explanation for the data, absurd as it was, is that black women have more testosterone and therefore are more masculine and unattractive. That’s not an inference loaded with sexism and racism?
@Jadey: He was analyzing (badly) the fact that the statistical material showed that the respondents in this study gave black women a lower “attractiveness” score than other women. It was not his own opinion (AFAIK). Anyway – I am really not in the mood to defend Kazanawa’s article (which I believe to be deeply flawed), so if you still believe it is racist I guess we could just agree to disagree. Btw, unless I am misinformed the Add Health study is US only. So explaining this statistic in terms of US cultural norms etc would seem to be a much more reasonable approach.
For the lurkers – My point was not about the racism in the data and I have no qualms with interpreting them in light of the systemic racism present in US cultural norms – I think it’s a perfectly sensible way to interpret the data, although Kanazawa clearly did not think it all that relevant. However, the specific example I raised in my previous comment was not about the data. It was about the racism in Kanazawa’s interpretation of the data which rested both on bad science and the trope of the hyper-masculine, unfeminine black woman (and, by association, the hypermasculine, testosterone-fuelled black man). That inference was most definitely his own opinion, and it was as much careless thinking as it was an expression of racism.
Wooow. Feministe threads are now at the point where commenters “agree to disagree” on whether an article entitled “Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Others?” is racist. Wooow. Some folks might be interested in what Scientific American had to say about it: “The intent behind a question can establish an immoral line of inquiry and instigate immoral research methods.”
Feministe threads are now at the point where commenters “agree to disagree” on whether an article entitled “Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Others?” is racist. Wooow. Seriously. Hopefully we can mostly agree that the “let’s agree to disagree” comment is really effing stupid?
matlun: @Jadey: He was analyzing (badly) the fact that the statistical material showed that the respondents in this study gave black women a lower “attractiveness” score than other women. It was not his own opinion (AFAIK). Actually, that’s not the case. He cherry-picked the data, which when looked at in full actually showed the opposite of his conclusion. Here: http://studentactivism.net/2011/05/25/satoshi-kanazawa-is-even-wronger-than-you-think/
Jill: Seriously. Hopefully we can mostly agree that the “let’s agree to disagree” comment is really effing stupid? Effing agreed.
bhuesca: “So everyone is mad because this is bad, wrong, incorrect science, right? They’re reacting this way because it’s both offensive AND the science is wrong?” and I said yes and he asked “what if this or something else is offensive BUT the science is correct?” It depends on what the science shows, how it’s being spun, and where the offensiveness comes from. I just posted a link showing that Kanazawa completely misrepresented the data he presented, but even if he hadn’t — even if the data showed what he claimed they showed — that wouldn’t make his “science … correct.” Because the question he claimed to answer, “are black women less attractive than other women,” isn’t a scientific question. It isn’t a question science can answer at all. So it’s not just that Kanazawa got the wrong answer, in other words, it’s that he asked a meaningless question. And when you ask a meaningless question, you can never get a meaningful answer.
@Kai: Interesting. Since I have no deeper knowledge about the Add Health data I did not know about the “Wave IV” data (apparently ignored because it didn’t fit the thesis). It does show that it was even wronger than I thought, indeed. @Jill, Kai, anyone else: Not trying to run away from the discussion. I just honestly was feeling uncomfortable “having” to defend an article I deeply disagreed with. If someone really want to continue this discussion and think I should stick around, then I will.
Matlun, even setting aside the Wave IV stuff (and the fact that he misrepresented Waves I-III, etc.), the original article wasn’t just straight reportage. Kanazawa is a racist, in the most dry technical sense of the word. He believes that black people are less intelligent, less attractive, less genetically healthy than whites. And he continues to believe this in the face of strong scientific evidence to the contrary. To call him racist is a simple statement of fact, and to deny it is to deny his own testimony as to his beliefs. As to this particular article, it doesn’t just misrepresent the data, and it doesn’t just draw false conclusions on shaky premises. It offers explanations for those (false, doctored) conclusions. Racist explanations. Kanazawa claims, falsely, that black people have more harmful genetic mutations than whites, because they’re — again, he claims, again, falsely — more evolutionarily primitive. He suggests that black women’s supposed unattractiveness is the result of their supposed higher levels of testosterone — once again, on no evidence at all. To call his article racist isn’t idle chatter. It’s pretty much an unavoidable assessment. That you claim otherwise suggests to me that you haven’t bothered to read the damn thing.
@Angus: Ok, due to this discussion I have now done some more investigation about Kanazawa’s work (a rather distasteful exercise). I may indeed have been giving in too much credit in just classifying him as fool and failed scientist. (In PZ Myer’s words: “the great idiot of social science”) Yes, if the definition of racist is simply someone who claims that one race is “less good” than another (according to some measure), then Kanazawa is indeed a racist. (Not an unproblematic description: This would catch a great many people in the definition. Many for example would claim that Blacks are better athletes than Asians). I am not certain about this. Another example: No matter how you define “attractiveness” it is clearly a physical property. Surely claiming that Caucasians are taller (another, more well defined, physical property) than Asians would be uncontroversial. What is the principal difference in the claims (beyond that Kanazawa is simply incorrect)? Again: This article is clearly garbage, but it is precisely when discussing distasteful views that you have strong opinions about that it is important (and hard) to try to be objective. PS. No, I do not think that this discussion will be productive, but as promised I will stay until no one else is interested in continuing (or for example a moderator steps in)
Attractiveness isn’t a physical property, not in the way you think. It’s a subjective judgment. Want to know who’s taller? Break out a ruler. Want to know who weighs more? Fetch a scale. But if you want to know who’s more attractive all you can do is ask people, and the answer you’ll get will depend on who you ask. Seriously. Go to any art museum with holdings prior to the 20th century. Hell, pick up a movie magazine from the 20s, or the 50s. Would Jean Harlow or Clark Gable make it in Hollywood today? No. Because what’s attractive is culturally conditioned.
matlun: Again: This article is clearly garbage, but it is precisely when discussing distasteful views that you have strong opinions about that it is important (and hard) to try to be objective. No. Objectivity is the language of a false authority – there is very little real objectivity in science. Even when our data are ostensibly objective (i.e., physiological indicators like brain activity, heart rate, or reflexive responses not amenable to conscious control – there is nothing objective about answering on a rating scale), a great deal of researcher subjectivity goes into the selection and framing of our research questions, the choice of methodology, the interpretation of our results, the wording and framing of our conclusions, and where and how we choose to disseminate our results. This applies in the non-social sciences as well. How we communicate about our data is absolutely influenced by who we are and what we believe. Claiming objectivity, even merely striving for it, gives us a false authority and specifically denigrates the perspectives of anyone with a perceived personal attachment to the results (because most people forget that *everyone* is personally attached to their results) who fails to conform to the normative expectations about what “objectivity” looks like (e.g., measured responses, avoidance of anything that might be considered “extreme” according to the normative expectations already in place, careful overt distancing of the self from the subject matter). Language about “objectivity” is a strategy for shutting up the people with the most to lose from not challenging the status quo. By making “objectivity” a standard, you automatically create a scenario where (in this case) black women begin with a disadvantage in making their criticisms known. And men, particularly white men, have the advantage. (Although Kanazawa himself is not a white man, the current status quo especially privileges white men because they are considered the most “objective” when it comes to matters of racism, not having to be burdened with the emotional consequences of being a target of racism). So no.
Matlun, I think it’s entirely possible to be objective about this “study” and its attendant confirmation bias (and the racism that fueled the assumptions of who was “objectively” more attractive) and to be disgusted with the racism throughout it. You can’t take a subjective thing like attractiveness, which varies from person to person, and apply statistical data to it the way you would height, weight, etc. Some cultures find heavier women attractive. Some cultures think really cut bodies are hot. Some cultures find very curly hair attractive and others find straight to be the ideal.
By the way, Matlun, the idea that blacks are better athletes than whites IS a racist idea. It’s racist in the sense that it imputed biological attributes to the non-biological category of “race.” More importantly, it’s a byproduct of the old-school racist idea that blacks are more physical, animal, carnal while whites are more cerebral, intellectual, cognitive. So yes, racist.
Yes, if the definition of racist is simply someone who claims that one race is “less good” than another (according to some measure), then Kanazawa is indeed a racist. (Not an unproblematic description: This would catch a great many people in the definition. Many for example would claim that Blacks are better athletes than Asians). And people who make such claims are repeating racist beliefs (Black = athletic animal, Asian = brainy nerd). What’s the confusion here? It sounds like you might actually hold these racist beliefs yourself, maybe that’s what’s tripping you up. I offer a definition for the many confused Feministe readers: Racism is an interlocking set of economic, political, social, and cultural institutions, actions, and beliefs which ensure the unequal distribution of power, resources, and privilege in favor of the dominant racial group at the expense of all other racial groups. An action, statement, thought, or belief can be described as racist if it upholds that system of inequality. Kanazawa’s article is racist. Period. Another example: No matter how you define “attractiveness” it is clearly a physical property. Surely claiming that Caucasians are taller (another, more well defined, physical property) than Asians would be uncontroversial. What is the principal difference in the claims (beyond that Kanazawa is simply incorrect)? “Attractiveness” isn’t a physical quality, Einstein. It exists in the culturally and societally conditioned mind of the perceiver. And what is your hangup with Asians being short bad athletes? (5′ 11″ athletic Asian here.) What data are you going on and how does it control for all factors such as nutrition, geography, and culture? I’ve spent lots of time in Asia and there are regions where I’m tall and regions where I’m not. The tallest player in the NBA is Chinese (actually Yao goes against both stereotypes you’ve busted out). And even if somehow all this data could be properly and rigorously gathered and controlled, what the frak does any of this have to do anything? Unless of course it is yet another attempt to muddy the waters with confusion and misdirection whenever the subject of racism comes up.
Kai: “Attractiveness” isn’t a physical quality, Einstein. It exists in the culturally and societally conditioned mind of the perceiver. Attractiveness is obviously a very fuzzy and subjective concept that will be evaluated differently by different observers (due to cultural preconceptions as well as personal taste). Still, it is a judgment about physical appearance. Kai: And what is your hangup with Asians being short bad athletes? (5′ 11″ athletic Asian here.) It is obviously a statistical measurement, which was obvious from the concept. And if you for example evaluates the top placers in the Olympic Games, you could possibly find some support for this thesis. That is obviously a measurement of the top performers which may not be carried over to any type of representative group. I have not bothered to investigate the truth of this statement since I do not believe it is important (I don’t really care about these group distributions – we should all have equal rights irrespective of group identities anyway). The question was: Should everyone holding these type of beliefs be considered a racist? Kai: I offer a definition for the many confused Feministe readers: Racism is an interlocking set of economic, political, social, and cultural institutions, actions, and beliefs which ensure the unequal distribution of power, resources, and privilege in favor of the dominant racial group at the expense of all other racial groups. An action, statement, thought, or belief can be described as racist if it upholds that system of inequality. Not a bad definition overall. Still – shouldn’t the intent of the actor count? Should we really only consider the outcome of the actions? Discounting the emotional ad hominem tendencies above, I am not really sure where and how we disagree about anything substantive.
If science suggests that X is true of a group of people, and X is something that, if true, is a negative trait, and subsequent analysis of the science proves that X is correct… then the correct response is to say, “What co-factors are involved in this that may be causing X to correlate with this group?” For instance, Dr. Social does a study which indicates that black people in the United States overwhelmingly have lower grades, less college attendance, and lower economic status than white people. Other people thoroughly analyze Dr. Social’s data and find that she is correct. However, what is Dr. Social’s explanation for this fact that she has discovered? – “Black people are dumber than white people” — this is a racist explanation. It’s also unscientific. It suggests an immutable and inherent characteristic of a large and varied population. It begs the question, because no mechanism is currently known to science as to how such a difference could come about (due to the fact that the commonly understood trait of “race” doesn’t actually exist, genetically.) And there are better, easier explanations. – “Black people are not given the educational or job opportunities that white people are, due to racism” — this is not a racist explanation. It might not be *correct* — it is itself a testable hypothesis — but it doesn’t suggest an immutable genetic characteristic of a population that is not in fact genetically distinct from the comparison group in any consistent way; rather, it says that a categorization schema we know that humans commonly apply is being commonly applied by humans to vary their behavior in a discriminatory way. As the existence of discrimination has been proved hundreds of thousands of times, it’s not a controversial mechanism for such a difference to exist. In order to test this hypothesis, one could perform experiments such as sending resumes to job offerings that are identical, but one has a culturally understood “black” name and the other a culturally understood “white” name (or send pictures with the resumes), and see if there is variation in who gets the job. We could analyze the performance of “racially” black students in comparison to “racially” white students in places in the world where that’s not the primary axis of discrimination. We could submit college applications from hypothetical applicants, one black and one white. All of these actions could test the hypothesis that discrimination is causing the effect. In point of fact all those experiments *were* done and *did* indicate that the poorer economic and educational status of Black people in comparison to White people can pretty much entirely be explained by discrimination and cultural issues, which is why “The Bell Curve” is derided as supremely bad science. Science *does* sometimes tell us things that are “politically incorrect”, although generally we knew them already. For instance, science has well proven that on average, men are taller and stronger than women. The proper response to this, scientifically, is not to say “And therefore men are superior”, but to look for causation of the effect, to identify what variables go into the effect, and to determine to what degree the effect should matter. For instance, an analysis of the work of police officers, trying to separate out work that involves physical strength from work that involves interaction with victims and witnesses, might indicate that despite the greater physical strength of men, it is more valuable to have a police force that’s balanced between men and women because it’s more common for police officers to talk to victims and witnesses than it is for them to use great physical strength, and human beings generally are more willing to talk to people who are like them, and women comprise a large portion of the population of victims and witnesses. Or, an analysis of the variability of strength between men and women might reveal that if you’re hiring firefighters, it’s more important to hire on the basis of *actual* physical ability to do the job than it is on gender, because a large number of women are in the subset of the population that’s strong enough for the job and a large number of men are in the subset that isn’t, even though the average man is stronger than the average woman. So there are, in fact, means of dealing with science that proves that there is an actual, biological difference between two groups of people, without being discriminatory and while being respectful of the two groups. “You don’t like my science because it’s not PC!” is the call of the terrible scientist for a reason; the scientist who actually discovers a testable, provable difference between two distinct groups will propose reasonable hypotheses, based on well-understood mechanisms, as to how that difference will come about, and won’t sound like a racist when they’re done making their point. The scientist who’s excoriated for “not being PC” is generally actually being excoriated for crap science, as well as being a racist/sexist piece of dog poop.
Alara Rogers: If science suggests that X is true of a group of people, and X is something that, if true, is a negative trait, and subsequent analysis of the science proves that X is correct… then the correct response is to say, “What co-factors are involved in this that may be causing X to correlate with this group?” Perhaps. Another response would be to follow up with the question: “Should this affect our public policy and laws in any way?” and answer “No. Law, justice and basic rights should be totally blind to race, sex, and any other group characteristics” So for feminist analysis (What kind of structural inequities do we see) group identities are obviously relevant, but for the question of what rights the individual X has, the group identity of this individual should be irrelevant (That it is, in fact, not irrelevant today is a consequence of current inequities)
matlun, I’m pretty sure we disagree substantively and profoundly. I’m an anti-racist person of color. You are…something else (based on this thread). You claim to be “objective” while calling me “emotional” (never heard that one before!) after arguing that the Kanazawa article is not racist. I’ve been fighting racism and racists since the first time I was attacked by white people as a child in a schoolyard and consequently beaten behind closed doors by a white schoolteacher for defending myself, throughout my life and career, to every time I walk into a white-dominated space. I deal with it every day. My handling of racism is exactly as objective and as emotional as it should be. Just to play along with this racist hypothesis you’re pushing: in the most recent Summer Olympics in Beijing, China won 51 gold medals; the USA won 36; South Korea won 13; Kenya won 5; Japan won 9; Jamaica won 6. Of course, the Olympics are an event originally rooted in Greek culture (there’s no event for Chinese martial arts, for example, or Central Asian horse riding, both of which are sports practiced by my unathletic ancestors); and not all countries, peoples, communities, are equally equipped or inclined to compete in the Olympics. So making this the objective measurement of innate athleticism is…well, let’s just say Eurocentric. The real question here is where you’re getting your racist hypothesis that Black folks are innately better athletes than Asians. I suspect it’s a deep dark well where many ugly thoughts stir.
Kai: Just to play along with this racist hypothesis you’re pushing Sigh. Seriously, I was not pushing this hypothesis. I just tried to find an example of a common but possibly racist position to illustrate a point. I tried to choose a purely physical example from sports to be relatively unprovocative (Who really cares about athletic performance?). Clearly I failed.