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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35154 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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New from me: Viral "Racism in Academia" Story Deleted When I Started Asking Questions

I noticed a suspicious-looking viral Twitter thread yesterday, so I started poking around a bit and, to my surprise, watched its author first reply to my question, then delete his reply and hide my question, then lock the thread, then delete the thread and nuke his whole account.

In this article, I tell that story and examine my takeaways from it. Highlights below:

“So I did an experiment, I am looking for a postdoctoral position and decided to check to what extent racism in science could be. I took my CV and changed the name to a more western one. I'd send it out with my real name, then a few days later (or before) with the western name.”

So began a viral Twitter thread from Mohamad, a PhD student with a small online presence and a remarkable and troubling story of racial bias in academia. When he applied to a postdoc using his real name, he got seventeen responses to a hundred applications, all negative. Changing nothing but his name, he experienced a remarkable transformation of fortunes: eighty-seven replies, including fifty-four scientists willing to apply for a fellowship with him. Not only that, but he reported harrowing harassment from the universities, with messages like “If we can keep lowering the barrier for entry, science will become a joke.”

The thread exploded in popularity, reaching well over 40000 likes and 10000 retweets. Millions of people saw it. Commenters rushed to extend their sympathies. Professors and researchers encouraged him to publish the experience, called for more implicit bias training in the field, and shared the story as an example of the grim reality academics must deal with. It began to spread around the internet, rising quickly to the front page of Hacker News and elsewhere.

Now the thread is gone, his account is renamed and private, and it looks increasingly likely the whole story was a fabrication.

In the replies to the original thread, there were a good handful of confused or uneasy responses, but none of them got much traction. One person pointed out that institutions should notice two copies of a CV with different names. Another asked how he could change his name on the scientific papers that would be included in the application. A third commented that most institutions would require letters of recommendation with others vouching for the individual under their real name.

There were other incongruities. Who would put in the work to send out two hundred applications under two different names, then provide no visible evidence? Who would design a precise experiment like that, with a hundred applications at once, in the middle of a high-pressure academic job search? What’s the likelihood that he could even find a hundred institutions with open postdoc positions exactly matching his niche academic field?

How could the results flip so dramatically, from nothing but rejections to half of the responders eagerly looking to apply with him? And what of the rude remarks? Any academic who harassed him as he described would be committing career suicide and opening themself up for lawsuits as soon as the harassment was publicized. (Link)

Look: none of this guarantees something fishy. There could be good answers to any or every one of these questions. But they’re odd, aren’t they? They demand explanations, they demand answers. At the very least, they demand curiosity.

None of these were the smoking gun that made him nuke his whole account, mind. That smoking gun came from a reddit thread shared on /r/MensRights a few days beforehand, pointed out most prominently by Stuart Ritchie.

In the end, this sort of self-nuke is about the best outcome I could really hope for. Someone with more sinister intent could have dodged my question, ignored people pointing out incongruities, and left the story up to let it keep spreading. Now, no news stories will be written to amplify it further. Nobody will keep the thread in their back pocket to add to a list of stories about racism in academia. No stubborn contrarians need to chase it around the internet begging people to remember that it probably didn’t happen.

All that’s left? A million people nodding vaguely and saying “Oh, yeah, I read something about that once. People with western names get like ten times as many callbacks as others. Hm, can’t find it now. You know how it goes.”

Just the vibes.

Thank you for the good work, Trace.

Hm. About that: I feel like integrity demands I speak up here, even though I also feel like I'm going to regret it, but here goes:

I do have some reservations about the personal involvement, here, same as with the LoTT incident. I was under my lurker-vow-of-silence at the time, but hey, that's okay: it just means that I've longer to formulate my thoughts. Long enough? We'll see.

See: I feel like it's against the spirit of this place for it to house after-action reports by culture warriors returned from campaign. "Check out this scalp I just claimed" doesn't seem like "leaving the rest of the internet at the door," or something. Now, this certainly shouldn't be taken so far as to say that you can't speak from your own experience - Doglatine reporting on family conversations, and probably Obsidian's report from the trucker protest - but I do feel like there's a difference between speaking from your life and, I dunno, writing up the outcomes of trouble that one has deliberately instigated. Maybe someone can articulate a better boundary; I feel I've still only got a vague sense myself.

But on which side of the boundary does this fall? I don't know. There's less personal involvement this time - but I do feel like "TracingWoodgrains reports on his victory over a dishonest Twitter culture warrior [but with the political valence - and the reception - reversed]" maybe smacks enough of an incoming 'gotcha' that something needed to be said. Fortunately, with the political valence reversed, the personal involvement still does make me uneasy, so maybe I did have a principle, or maybe I've just tricked myself into assuming one since them. Either way, I hope it sticks iff it's worthwhile.

with the political valence reversed

If you read the essay, the point is that all spaces love bullshit that confirms their priors. Whether MRAs convinced that people hire only women or racists convinced that people only hire white people, people want that kind of content, really bad. And everyone should ask themselves how they fit in that narrative.

Trace was in the wrong with the LibsofTikTok story, a journalist should never become the story.

But I don't see this as a 'gotcha', more reporting on 'not enough hate crimes to fill demand, have to manufacture some' tendencies. Trace is a lot more liberal than I am, and if he is a Culture Warrior, he's generally on the other side of the fence - see TheSchism, which was set up for those driven off The Motte by the mouthy right-wingers 😁 This is different from the furry hoax, as Trace didn't set the entire thing up; this guy posted his (fake?) claims of "I am discriminated against because I am a minority, here's proof", and Trace (and by the accounts, some others) felt "hm, something fishy here" and being a journalist (abhorrent profession) he went digging. That's a legit story.

You may have a point about "sounds too much like boasting" when coming on here talking about it, but I feel it falls just on the right side of the line.

a journalist

How is Trace a journalist? He's just some guy that posts online and produces a podcast for two people who are I guess quasi-journalists still.

FWIW Trace has consistently self-identified as a journalist

That's close enough for journalism nowadays (boom-boom!)

He's getting paid for covering stories, so I guess that's being a freelance reporter? I don't know, he's making a quasi-living out of it and not just pulling pranks to post to /r/drama, that seems like a difference to me!

"Check out this scalp I just claimed" doesn't seem like "leaving the rest of the internet at the door," or something

When the "scalp" is calling out a 2-bit liar who just copied and pasted a /r/mensrights post that a bunch of sheep believed, it's a lot more like pulling a hair off someone's arm.

What was lost here? A grifter had their 15 minutes of virality and spent a couple of days feeling very seen and popular. Now that account is memory-holed and they've faced no real consequences. It's a pretty far cry from them getting fired or blackballed.

I see your reason for concern, but I don't think it's accurate to stick this one in quite the same bucket. Specifically, I don't know that "instigating trouble" is an accurate framing here.

That my question contributed to him shutting the whole thing down was welcome, but unexpected. The role I expected to play was "onlooker investigating the veracity of suspicious-looking story." Increasingly, I reach out to the people involved as part of that sort of process. Is that instigating trouble? If it is, then no media outlet in the country would have cause to post here: getting commentary from the people involved in events is core to reporting.

I believe my behavior here was in line with the standard for anyone curious about a story and motivated to get to the bottom of it. That my digging led to more of a story than there would otherwise have been shouldn't preclude me, I believe, from writing that story or sharing it here.

I wonder what would have happened if the racists in the story were part of an out-group rather than an in-group.

If you've spent any time around academia, even as an undergrad, you'd know that these institutions and the people that they are composed of are absolutely desperate for diversity. In their hierarchy Mohamed is better than Christopher, but Fatima would be even better. It doesn't pass the sniff test that not only would these institutions harbor an anti-Arab bias, but some would write down racist statements and send them to the applicant.

Imagine instead that the applicant was seeking a job in the oil industry, or with a defense contractor. Would the thread still be up?

Seconding @VoxelVexillologist. Here in defense the main qualifiers are citizenship and security clearance.

I also have spent undergrad/grad time around academia, and don’t find your characterization to be very accurate. Despite working two steps removed from defense, in a tech field, and in a very white Midwestern university, there was no desperation to the culture. University research, at least in engineering, has the advantages of international collaborations and giant pools of exchange students.

Anyway, I expect we’d have seen the same behavior. Guy nuked his thread because someone asked too many questions, not because the scenario was “obviously” wrong.

In my experience, the primary differences in hiring for defense versus general tech is that the defense hiring leads with "Are you a US citizen?", possibly followed by "Are you willing and able to acquire and maintain a clearance?". Civil hiring lacks a bona fide reason to ask about citizenship and tends instead to ask if you'll need a work visa: they don't want to know if you're a citizen or permanent resident (green card). In both cases anything beyond those questions is generally forbidden.

There are plenty of (American citizen) workers in defense with "foreign-sounding" names. The security process is rather opaque, but even naturalized citizens can do sensitive work. See the Lockheed pride socks meme if you think the hiring preferences aren't similar, although the resulting demographics are different largely because they've removed all green card and H1B applicants from the system.

That said, I've definitely seen cases where heuristics have been applied to double check whether, say, a candidate with a degree from a non-US institution correctly marked their visa or citizenship status.

In fact, many defense companies will higher non-citizens too, for work not requiring actual clearance: note that ITAR regulations, for example, apply to exports to non-“US persons”, and a permanent resident is a “US person”. Thus, a permanent resident can work on ITAR/EAR controlled stuff just fine.

To be honest, some of the criticism also applies to that MRA thread (especially about it being weird that someone put in so much work and doesn’t even want to show it off).

Then, that MRA thread really agrees with my priors that tech companies are really chasing female applicants, since they have diversity targets that are basically not possible to meet. So any woman applying to a tech job (at big tech) will have an easier time getting a response and an interview (from there on, they probably only have a light advantage, see that study with anonymised voices for tech interviews).

But I still don’t believe that MRA post really happened.

Looks like your post is now the top submission on HN, not sure if it will be there long before getting flagged.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32898573

Man, even the arguments on Hacker News that agree with my viewpoint are very poorly made.

Was it always like this or did it go downhill?

Interesting that the Root and other publications by people of color hear slurs when watching the video but Caucasians do not.

It suggests that BYU, and whites in generally, may not even be aware of their casual use of terms considered offensive to minorities.

I wouldn't say the arguments are poorly made, because that's some quality gaslighting. I've never seen "don't believe your racist eyes and ears" done so blatantly and literally.

And less than 15 minutes later I'm not seeing it anymore on the front page.

Thanks for letting me know (in both cases)! Looks like they decreased its weighting pretty heavily/quickly—which, fair. Always happy when I show up there at all.

People like people like themselves, it is natural and normal. Most animals have difficulty being around members of the same species who are further than second cousins or a partner. Getting people to cooperate, work together, understand each other and creating a sense of community is hard. Go to a restaurant and look at the people who join a table, you will do a much better than random job at guessing which table people belong to. It isn't just race, two white people don't have much in common. People want to be friends with someone the same age, income bracket, level of education, personality type, political orientation, family situation etc. Friends even look the same.

When I have hired people, I have absolutely looked for people who are more similar to me. I don't just need someone who can preform tasks, I want to build a team, build friendships, have good communication and have someone who has similar experiences and worldview. When I have looked for people to join a team, I imagine the team doing something on a Friday night and I try to picture the candidate in that group of friends. The degree to which the candidate would naturally be a part of the team is imho an important recruiting criteria.

Most jobs are more of a team effort than individuals making extraordinary individual efforts. A PhD candidate that builds a great relationship with the research team and the lab in which people know each other's grandmother's names is going to preform better than rockstar individuals.

Nice work there.

What strikes me about the whole ordeal is how eager people are to consume this type of content, how eager they are to be lied to in just the way the suites them. Also, I'm surprised that we don't see more of this type of content produced. Given the demand, it seems there's a some good money to be made here, especially if you use something like GPT-3 to just generate twitter reports like this.

It shouldn't be that surprising, and for the same reason I'm not overly updating on this post. I'm not going to independently verify this and it conforms to my prior, if I took it too seriously I'd be making the same mistake as the people who fell for the other post, although I do trust trace more than some random. I also wouldn't put it past trace for this to be a double hoax to show how easily people who call out hoxes are hoaxed.

I recently got a youtube ad for an AI social media post generator. I googled it and I guess there’s more, but here’s the first result:

https://postello.ai/

Keep in mind that the “business” they’re advertising for also includes “influencer”.

I'm not too shocked. It's just confirmation bias. If you have a belief, you'll search out information that confirms it in order to feel justified.

If I hate a film, I'll look for reviews that also rated it poorly. I already know what I believe, what joy do I get from reading stuff that disagrees with me?

I think there's a difference: I'm not very cautious about film reviews. If I don't like a film, I'll happily get on the bandwagon of those bashing it.

But when I'm evaluating ideas about how the world works, then I'm going to use a much higher standard. It's more uncomfortable, both because the issues are more complicated and more important, but it seems the struggle is worth it.

So basically he just copied that Boston experiment from 2003, the one that is always quoted about "black names do worse than white names on job applications" and personalised it? For sympathy, likes, etc.?

Yeah, I can believe it, unfortunately. A lot of people think that being Internet Famous is something to aim for, especially if they see other people getting away with "This horrible thing happened to me, bigotry is real, here are my Venmo and Ko-Fi and Patreon and GoFundMe accounts if you want to help me out after this heinous experience". And since the supply of white supremacism/racial hatred is not sufficient to keep up with the demand, sometimes you have to manufacture your own hate crimes.

Wasn’t the Sokol Squared guy punished for experimenting on humans without advance warning? I thought this kind of science was now off-limits?

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