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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35161 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.

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?

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.

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