# Colored more attractive if I'm colored? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 2, 2006, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colored-more-attractive-if-im-colored/359170 "2006-06-02T17:45:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Alex\_Dubinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dbc845/32.png) [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2006, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colored-more-attractive-if-im-colored/359170/41 "2006-06-06T01:17:26Z")
You know, it really annoys me here the way people uphold so-called “scientific” research that has such a gigantic margin of error that it is usually no different from good anecdotal evidence. My point isn’t that we should lean too heavily on hear-say, but that we should not hold “scientific” studies in too holy a light. Information can come from many different sources, and we must have many criteria on how to judge it, not merely whether it was funded by a grant. Hear-say is tainted by our common perceptions and biases, you’ll say. Well, guess what, so are a great deal of scientific studies. It really pisses me off when people call “cite”, “cite”, “cite, you motherfucker” instead of actually DISCUSSING THE ARGUMENT THAT’S GIVEN. You have reason to believe that men pay a great deal of attention to womens’ hairdos? Please share it, because a mass of opinions does, in fact, in certain situations begin to approach the truth. And if you have the slightly-educated opinions of some scientists to share with us, we’ll count those as well. ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Dubinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dbc845/32.png) [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2006, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colored-more-attractive-if-im-colored/359170/42 "2006-06-06T01:22:20Z")
Er, I didn’t say it pointedly enough: expecting that citations are all that close to the truth is just WISHFUL THINKING! If you only listen to them, you can still try to sort out the wheat from the chaff and maybe get somewhere. However, if you perform that same process using a wider body of information, you’ll actually succeed better. And if your mind is too weak to perform that efficiently using things other than studies, than it is also too weak to perform that same task when examining “science”. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2006, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colored-more-attractive-if-im-colored/359170/43 "2006-06-06T05:21:27Z")
So, **Alex** , what’s your point? Are you suggesting that we should give an acknowledgedly unscientific conclusion the same weight as a scientific one? Of course science is riddled with biases. But we don’t minimize those biases by treating all observations equally. Science may not be able to rid itself of biases, but at least it tries to minimize those biases. ---
**Author:** ![FRDE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e68b1a/32.png) [@FRDE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FRDE)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2006, 9:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colored-more-attractive-if-im-colored/359170/44 "2006-06-06T09:15:24Z")
@John Mace I deliberately used the word ‘unscientific’ - it was : a) an attempt at wry humour b) an indication that the sample size was statistically insignificant However, I reckon that there is some mileage in the phenomenon that I described. You are probably aware that most quoted ‘statistics’ are actually statistically insignificant - theories are often unproveable - we cannot ‘prove’ Darwin’s theory, nor Dawkin’s ‘The Selfish Gene’ There is also ‘scientific method’ to consider, generally one starts with a hypothesis, and by testing produces a theory - which is just an un-disproved hypothesis I have a hypothesis that you do not understand UK English humour 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2006, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colored-more-attractive-if-im-colored/359170/45 "2006-06-06T13:41:40Z")
**FRDE** : Evolution is one subject about which a lot of garbage is posted on this board. Some of it would be funny if there weren’t people around who believed it. So, unless I’m familiar with someone’s posting style, I never assume something is a joke in a GQ thread which touches on evolution. ---
**Author:** ![FRDE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e68b1a/32.png) [@FRDE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FRDE)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2006, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colored-more-attractive-if-im-colored/359170/46 "2006-06-06T15:11:23Z")
Oddly I reckon Darwin was right - I also reckon that there is an accelerated form I suspect that the ‘sports’ are not random diverse, but not random Do you know what ‘switched off’ means ?’ ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Dubinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dbc845/32.png) [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2006, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colored-more-attractive-if-im-colored/359170/47 "2006-06-07T07:35:35Z")
> [@](#): > > So, Alex, what’s your point? Are you suggesting that we should give an acknowledgedly unscientific conclusion the same weight as a scientific one? Of course science is riddled with biases. But we don’t minimize those biases by treating all observations equally. Science may not be able to rid itself of biases, but at least it tries to minimize those biases. No. WE SHOULDN’T BE GIVING WEIGHT TO CONCLUSIONS IN THE FIRST PLACE!!! God, it’s the dumbest, laziest thing one can ever do is to read a conclusion and then say “well… i’ll believe it based on who wrote it.” I mean if all you do is think with your ass and read conclusions, then I guess go for the peer-reviewed ones. However, not “treating all observations equally” should entail more than looking at the byline! It should involve examining the data and arguments themselves. You minimize biases by thinking critically about all propositions, and extracting the true information and value inherent in them. Science may _try_ to minimize biases, but it hardly gets very far and can hardly be relied upon (at least in the amorphous fields like sociology in which experiments sure as hell aren’t the golden metric that they used to be in physics). And once you start actually thinking on this higher level, it matters much less where your data comes from because you are capable of understanding its true significance no matter what. You are not muddled by anecdotal accounts, you are enlightened. Like I said before this may not be for everyone, but I hope that all participants on this forum will aspire to do this! And will quit shouting “cite” as if they were the kind of idiot who just needs to be told something by someone important. Learn the word “evidence.” ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Dubinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dbc845/32.png) [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2006, 7:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colored-more-attractive-if-im-colored/359170/48 "2006-06-07T07:38:14Z")
ugh. i need to be more patient with my editing. ---
**Author:** ![Askia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2006, 7:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colored-more-attractive-if-im-colored/359170/49 "2006-06-07T07:50:34Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > I once had a Nigerian guy ask me if I had some kind of disease. He’d never met a black person who was so pale, and he thought I was suffering from some kind of anemia **(and also because I don’t have a butt, no joke.)** [bolding mine. – Askia.] Cite? ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Dubinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dbc845/32.png) [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2006, 7:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colored-more-attractive-if-im-colored/359170/50 "2006-06-07T07:59:59Z")
i mean i’m not arguing that an anecdote isn’t an anecdote. I’m just saying it’s not nothing, especially if you have many of them. most important of all, i am arguing that scientific studies are anecdotes as well!!! Some things were controlled for, but no single study ever gathers nearly enough data to produce a full conclusion. One must look at its data and its parameters and make a note in ones ahead, “alright, so under these circumstances that happens, although there could be all this other stuff going on, but it fits like so with this other study that had these other parameters and this other data.” Exactly as one would with an anecdote. I won’t go into the way the current scientific process is flawed (controls are pointless; data, with variables varied not held the same, is king; and conclusions can be kept private by the dumbass who thinks he can make a conclusion from one study; I understand how a team wants to feel like it has produced something whole, but we have to somehow change that and reward people while not denying the fact that they are merely blips of a much larger picture.) ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2006, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colored-more-attractive-if-im-colored/359170/51 "2006-06-07T11:53:10Z")
> [@Alex\_Dubinsky](#): > > i mean i’m not arguing that an anecdote isn’t an anecdote. I’m just saying it’s not nothing, especially if you have many of them. It’s not “nothing”, but it isn’t data and it’s not science. If you want to argue that there’s nothing wrong with posting anecdotes in GQ, fine. There’s nothing wrong with it, provided it’s clear that they are anecdotes. And surely you’ve heard that the plural of anecdote is not “data”, which is more than just a clever little saying-- it’s true. > [@](#): > > most important of all, i am arguing that scientific studies are anecdotes as well!!! That’s just factually incorrect (emphasis added). > [@](#): > > [Anecdotal evidence](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence) > > Anecdotal evidence is an informal account of evidence in the form of an anecdote, or hearsay. The term is usually used in contrast to scientific evidence… ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Dubinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dbc845/32.png) [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2006, 8:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colored-more-attractive-if-im-colored/359170/52 "2006-06-08T08:20:46Z")
again, you have too high a view of what scientific data is. i think it is here where we disagree. and yes, a whole bunch of anecdotes do end up approaching scientific data. Of course, science has a lot of different kinds of data. In many fields, data does truly paint a complete and accurate picture. When you’re mapping the ocean, there isn’t that much point talking to sailors (unless they’re telling you about rogue waves). However, in cases of girls prettying themselves up for each other. Or in most other cases of sociology and other “hard-to-study” fields (read: when having controls usually defeats the purpose of gathering data), then anecdotes (corroborated by many) will be a fountain of information of decent substance, and scientific studies will be exercises in futility. Thus, in those fields, one should not cry “cite” in the face of an anecdote. It doesn’t make sense from two ends. ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Dubinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dbc845/32.png) [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2006, 8:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colored-more-attractive-if-im-colored/359170/53 "2006-06-08T08:25:18Z")
oh, and don’t argue from definitions, you #(\*$&. i think that’s the thing that pisses me off worst of all on these forums. no shit “anecdote” is usually used to be in contrast to “scientific evidence.” thank you captain obvious. so what was your argument, again? i’m wrong because a dictionary says so? did you understand anything i was saying before that only idiots think they’re right because they can find someone else who agrees? (not that a dictionary giving a definition even counts as someone arguing your point) ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Dubinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dbc845/32.png) [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2006, 8:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colored-more-attractive-if-im-colored/359170/54 "2006-06-08T08:28:40Z")
according to jerks like you, I would never be able to communicate a point via juxtraposition. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2006, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colored-more-attractive-if-im-colored/359170/55 "2006-06-08T11:22:15Z")
**Moderator warning** > [@Alex\_Dubinsky](#): > > oh, and don’t argue from definitions, you #(\*$&. and > [@](#): > > according to jerks like you, I would never be able to communicate a point via juxtraposition. **Alex**. This is General Questions and name calling is forbidden. Don’t do this again. **samclem** General Questions Moderator [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/colored-more-attractive-if-im-colored/359170.md?page=2)