>>The study adds to a growing body of knowledge about what anonymizing funding applications can—and can’t—do. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), for example, experimented with concealing information about applicants’ identities from peer reviewers as part of an effort to understand why Black applicants are 35% less likely than white researchers to receive grants. The results were mixed—Black applicants’ scores did not improve, but those for white researchers decreased—and some experts were skeptical about whether the reviewers truly didn’t know the identities of the applicants.Humans are such amazing pattern matchers. Even with the identities concealed, the reviewers were able to figure out who was black and discriminate against them in favor of white applicants. This level of systemic racism is absolutely dumbfounding.
MacsHeadroom|1 year ago
We know blind tryouts for orchestras result in fewer black and disadvantaged students getting accepted for a similar reason. They have, on average fewer resources and less support. So they simply, on average, perform worse than their white and affluent counterparts.
The reviewers needn't be racist to see these results.
akoboldfrying|1 year ago
That's one possible explanation; another is that the black applicants were just not as good, on average.
The explanation for that, in turn, could be that systemic racism in education in the past has left black applicants less well prepared than other applicants. It doesn't have to be innate group-level differences in intelligence, which is politically unsayable but nevertheless also a possible explanation for the difference.
throwaway74432|1 year ago