I've had Williams/Ceci 2014 quoted at me before and it was hugely over-generalised then too. There's simply no rational basis for claiming (like you implied) that it shows wide-spread discrimination against men. It's a study of tenure-track hiring for four STEM subjects, one of which showed zero bias.
> The drop out rates for males are (much) higher.
Seems off-topic, can you explain the relevence of this? There are serious problems with boys education but they don't seem to have a problem with discrimination in the workplace, see [0][1][2][3][4].
> ... simply because of an attribute that should not significantly factor into the decision.
That's an opinion I think there's reasonable evidence to discard, or at least add some nuance to.
Diverse workplaces are more pleasant to work in, and in the case of universities it seems reasonable to believe (based on the work of Carol Dweck & others) that having relevant female role models would improve outcomes for female students in STEM subjects.
Additionally there's a growing body of evidence that documents how diverse workplaces have higher productivity; and gender gaps in entrepreneurship negatively affect GDP (Cuberes & Teignier for a 2015 example http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21661804-gender-equal...)
[0] Female students seen as less competent than identical male students with identical application materials, offered lower starting salaries (Moss-Racusin et al, 2012)
[1] People in gender-incongruent roles penalised more heavily for mistakes (Brescoll, Dawson, & Uhlmann, 2010).
[2] Voluble women perceived as less competent and less suitable leaders, inverse true for men (Brescoll, 2011).
[3] Women who succeed in male-dominated fields percieved as not likeable (Heilman et al, 2004).
[4] Students question the competence of female teachers who evaluate them negatively, less so than male teachers (Sinclair & Kunda 2000).
> Seems off-topic, can you explain the relevence of this?
You said:
> Hiring faculty is a very different thing (and subject to different rules and policies) than getting students succesfully to graduation.
That's why I mentioned it.
> Diverse workplaces are more pleasant to work in
If somebody's opinion was that all male workplaces are more pleasant to work in, would you find that a reasonable basis for discriminating against female applicants?
> Additionally there's a growing body of evidence that documents how diverse workplaces have higher productivity; and gender gaps in entrepreneurship negatively affect GDP (Cuberes & Teignier for a 2015 example http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21661804-gender-equal...)
Not a very convincing study. They just noticed that women work less than men, and calculated the increase in GDP if women worked as much as men. Note that from the data they use it is apparent that women work more in poorer societies. So maybe women work less in richer societies because they can. This is a good thing, because it means the things people do are dictated more by their passion and less by economic necessity.
The other studies are all about perception. I wonder how much of it is due to the effect that I mentioned (if you confer a selection advantage to a group then it becomes rational to believe that post selection individuals in that group are less competent). I'm also a bit wary of publication bias. I've heard from people in the field that there are certain results that are good for your career and certain results that are not.
Do you know of any reliable studies showing actual discrimination of the magnitude that the study I cited showed?
You keep dodging the fact that this entire comment thread started from you massively overstating the results of a single study, taking it far past the credible scope of the study.
Either knowingly or unknowingly you're abusing both the study's findings and the scientific method as a whole.
We can talk hypotheticals or debate the relative merit of affirmative action, or discuss the flaws in specific studies (because let's face it perfection is hard in social science), but first we need to address why you feel the need to misrepresent the findings of studies. Did you not read the abstract you linked to?
I did. How did I misrepresent it, and how am I overstating the results of the study I cited? How am I abusing the scientific method as a whole? When you make these grandiose claims it would have been nice to provide at least some form of accompanying argument, rather than just stating it as fact.
At risk of repeating myself... You've taken a study that looked specifically at tenure-track faculty hiring within four STEM subjects, i.e. a very specific, limited, scope. You then presented that as "evidence" in a general context (in reply to a point about hiring in general being biased against women) in order to argue that the hiring process is biased against men, without any mention of the limited scope of that study.
The way I see it, one of these things is true;
(a) You made a mistake, fair enough, no big deal
(b) You're unfamiliar interpreting studies, fair enough, no big deal
(c) You're misrepresenting science to further an agenda
Given your vociferous objections to affirmative action I'm guessing (c) but happy to give you the benefit of the doubt.
(d) You are deeply embedded in an ideology and therefore not able to deal with facts in an unbiased way. Had the results of that study been the reverse, the study would have been fantastic since it is objectively much stronger than any of the studies you cited.
> The drop out rates for males are (much) higher.
Seems off-topic, can you explain the relevence of this? There are serious problems with boys education but they don't seem to have a problem with discrimination in the workplace, see [0][1][2][3][4].
> ... simply because of an attribute that should not significantly factor into the decision.
That's an opinion I think there's reasonable evidence to discard, or at least add some nuance to.
Diverse workplaces are more pleasant to work in, and in the case of universities it seems reasonable to believe (based on the work of Carol Dweck & others) that having relevant female role models would improve outcomes for female students in STEM subjects.
Additionally there's a growing body of evidence that documents how diverse workplaces have higher productivity; and gender gaps in entrepreneurship negatively affect GDP (Cuberes & Teignier for a 2015 example http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21661804-gender-equal...)
[0] Female students seen as less competent than identical male students with identical application materials, offered lower starting salaries (Moss-Racusin et al, 2012)
[1] People in gender-incongruent roles penalised more heavily for mistakes (Brescoll, Dawson, & Uhlmann, 2010).
[2] Voluble women perceived as less competent and less suitable leaders, inverse true for men (Brescoll, 2011).
[3] Women who succeed in male-dominated fields percieved as not likeable (Heilman et al, 2004).
[4] Students question the competence of female teachers who evaluate them negatively, less so than male teachers (Sinclair & Kunda 2000).