First of all, I’m not ignoring any facts. My response was to show that comparing a first year medical student to a board-certified surgeon when it comes to who you’d want to operate on you is not relevant to the debate as we have a lot more information than their MCAT scores in that equation. Comparing someone who didn’t need as high a score on their MCAT as someone else- with no further information- is, since that’s what we’re talking about.
And no, I don’t need to show that MCAT scores are meaningful to competence in the operating room. It’s a hypothetical question. If the reader is rushed to the E.R. and from there rushed to the O.R., who would he rather have as a surgeon when he knows that black people don’t need as high a score as white people on their MCAT scores- a black surgeon or a white surgeon- not knowing anything else about either of them but their color? I’m betting that most people would care more about the MCAT scores than they would care about them being faithful to their wives or their golf scores.
What are the shreds of evidence that it DID porduce a fair result? As far as I know about the decision, it is not based one bit on whether the justices themselves thought the test was fair or not, rather it was based on whether the rejection of the tests was a Title VII violation. The city adequately showed that the disparity of the test, along with other information they had gathered made it a reaosnable action for them take and WAS NOT a racially biased decision.
But it is reasonable to conclude after the cites that Chief Pedant provided that they are inferior test takers even “into the post-medical school licensing exams (called the USMLE) and into the Specialty Board exams.” Any evidence presented is combated by you with, “but blacks are still treated like they’re black.”
Even then, it really doesn’t matter. What’s the difference if the reason is genetic or environmental (as far as the debate presented by the OP)? If it’s environmental, something should be done to combat that, not give anyone a break on test scores because how unfair the world might be.
I don’t believe it distracts inappropriately. It succinctly portrays the conclusions you seem to have drawn; opinions which are unsupported, and distasteful enough for most people to have drawn their own negative conclusion of your character and logical reasoning without my rhetoric.
Depends on how you define population groups. In general though, I understand your point and don’t wish to quibble with semantics.
Again, generally speaking this is the case.
Are you still beating this dead horse? This is just not the case. There isn’t an NBA “test” first of all, and the racial and ethnic make up of the NBA varies so widely from decade to decade that it makes it nearly impossible to draw conclusions based on the current makeup. Genetics cannot explain those rapid changes. The same applies to other leagues like the MLB and NFL. I noticed you ducked the earlier questions about those counter examples. Why has Black representation in baseball fallen so dramatically in recent years?
Your second point regarding preparatory disadvantages is technically true, but it misses the point entirely. Having more resources means you have more options to excel in other areas. More importantly, it doesn’t mean they are playing or practicing more often. It also ignores that the inner-city basketball system and culture is far better at molding young talent than the suburban one.
There is no such thing as equivalent opportunity, and even if there were, it certainly doesn’t apply to similarly-situated people of different races if only for the fact that society treats them differently.
Their position is pretty much unsupportable seeing as there is scant evidence for it, and there is overwhelming evidence for numerous other factors.
Yes, they have. Do you have any evidence of compelling scrutiny to these theories?
We can never prove that anymore than we can prove there is no God. All we can do is use the evidence we have in front of us. There is overwhelming evidence that other factors explain nearly all of the outcomes we see before us. It would be intellectually dishonest to say that genetics cannot play a role, but it is even more dishonest to assume they play a major role when we have far more compelling, and substantiated theories in front of us. It’s also morally problematic given our history, and the fact that such beliefs demonstrably exacerbate existing disparate outcomes in both directions.
It makes it harder to White kids to believe they can play in the NBA when we tell them they are genetically inferior, and it also makes it harder for Blacks kids to do well on tests when you tell them they lack the cognitive ability. This what bothers me about people who hold opinions like you do. Not just ignoring contrary evidence, but also a callous disregard for the fact your beliefs affect people in serious ways. It magnifies the problems you are attempting to quantify. I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to advance our study of genetics even if it confirms your beliefs, but we need to do it in a responsible way that embraces evidence over anecdotes and conjecture.
But you didn’t have identical social and opportunity variables. Hell, your genes are probably more similar than the experiences, interactions, and opportunities you’ve had.
You do if you are attempting to validate a preference for those who did well on the MCAT over those who didn’t do as well.
Only because we’ve been conditioned to think one is more predictive than the other. That has simply not been proven. If someone produced a peer-reviewed study tomorrow that conclusively proved that doctors who cheat on their wives are 25% more likely to kill their patients, don’t you think people would want to go to doctors who are faithful to their spouses? The only difference is that instead of using studies, we are relying on our (often correct) presumption that smart people do well on tests, and are good at what they eventually do.
It is a valid retort when such treatment has been demonstrably proven to have an effect on test those results (as it has). Noticeably absent was any evidence that these inferior test takes become inferior practitioners.
It does matter, see my above post. It also matters in terms of policy if you think you are dealing with people who cannot learn as well rather than those who have not been taught to.
I think you are missing my point. What do you believe is the point of these tests? If they don’t reliably predict future performance or competence, and they are often not related to the job, what are we gaining from relying in them so heavily?
If you think there are genetic differences, then can you point to any? Can you name one single study that shows differences in the gene expression in proteins that are required for memory retrieval, encoding, and storage between blacks and other “races”? Can you name one single study that shows racial differences in the expression of genes in cortical neurons? If you can confine any examples to the following high-impact, respectable journals: Cell, Nature, Neuron, Science, and Neuroscience, it would be appreciated; though I’d eagerly look at other peer-reviewed references that you may have.
Quick hijack:
If blacks are intellectually inferior, that’d be fine by me. As long as my undergrad and graduate grades are retroactively adjusted to take into account that I had to overcome the sloth of my own I.Q. A fair exchange would be exchanging “B’s” to “A’s” and my “A’s” to “OMG!” and we’ll be even. I also want my GRE verbal, writing, and math percentile score increased, too. And a pony: a black one with a long, swishy tail and a short neck where I might don the beast with flowers.
Why use the MCAT at all when plenty of other exams exist that are much closer to measuring how much an actual physician knows…since, you know, that’s their intended purpose and stuff? I know it sounds crazy but 4 years of medical school tests and practicums, plus a very rigorous board exam has to carry more weight than a silly entrance exam score. Sweating over the MCAT as if it’s any kind of valid metric for assessing a physician’s worth makes as much sense to me as fretting over a Nobel Laureate’s high school GPA.
Inevitably in discussions about Affirmative Action, I get the sense that opponents are inordinately focused on judging people’s competency by how rigorous it is for them to get in rather than looking at how rigorous it is to get out. The unspoken admission is that one’s worth is not based on their actual accomplishments, but rather on how many arbitrary hoops they were able to jump through in order to simply make a particular accomplishment possible. The purpose of higher education seems entirely lost in these discussions. I’d imagine that if an alien were reading they’d think a kid with an below average SAT score who graduated cum laude from one of the toughest schools in the country is worthy of more contempt than the kid who aced the SAT but dang near flunked out due to time mismanagement and laziness. It’s the education that is of practical value, not a test score that purports to only predict the uptake of said education.
Seems to me that anyone who has is smart enough to not only graduate from college, but then also go on to successfully graduate from medical school and then successfully gain licensure has more than proved themselves worthy enough to lance the boils from thine asses. If they aren’t truly qualified, then that’s more of indictment on the school that they graduated from and the licensing board who created the USMEL. Not on the admission committee that let them in.
If I’m in the ER for something requiring immediate surgery, a physician’s MCAT score (or their high school GPA, or the grade they made on their 7th grade book report) is the last thing that would be on my mind. I’d probably be much more concerned about the hospital’s reputation because they’re the entity responsible for hiring and firing. They are going to be privy to more information about a doctor than I realistically could be. And any hospital that thinks it can tell by a physician’s race or MCAT score how good they are is not any kind of place that I’d want to find myself in.
No it doesn’t it’s completely irrelevant. It’s actually a question designed to avoid the issue. ‘Who would you trust, the guy who’s been to med school or the guy who has never been to med school yet?’, is not a serious question and has no bearing on the argument.
Except the problem here is testing and past performances are PRECISELY what we judge everything by. Getting into deep epistemological problems regarding verifiability just cast doubt on our ability to verify ANYTHING by ANY criteria. Why have tests at all if they don’t verify anything? Why judge a Doctor based on recommendations if being a brilliant surgeon for ten years is not indicative of future performance?
Again my issue here, to be clear is not, ‘black people are inferior’, but that our standards should be color blind.
By the way, you’ve gone on to illustrate the “getting in” fixation that I’m talking about and its absurdity when taken to its logical conclusion. In your hypothetical, the black physician could have easily received his training from stellar institutions such as Harvard or Johns Hopkins, while the white physician could have gone to a small podunk school barely holding on to its accreditation. Even if the white guy did have a higher MCAT score than his black counterpart, why in the hell should this factoid usurp the value of the black guy’s superior education? Are we really supposed to believe that a entrance exam can tell us which of these guys is best prepared to do open-heart surgery?
I told you, my point was that I don’t because I was showing that the medical student to board-certified surgeon analogy is not actually analogous to the argument.
My pet peeve with message board debates is making the same arguments over and over and when someone gives up repeating himself, the other poster is the perceived winner. I’ll answer the posts below one more time and then I’m done here.
Whatever. We’re taught that test scores matter and we allow professionals to become professionals based on test scores, so the majority of the world naturally believes test scores matter. If you believe they don’t, then you produce the evidence instead of asking me to.
Not every decision we make is based on the results of a study we’re carrying around in the backs of our heads. You also brought up golf scores earlier. If I was in the O.R. and was given a choice between a surgeon who got lousy scores playing golf and one who got great ones, not having anything else to go by, I’d pick the one who was the better golfer. Surgery takes hand-eye coordination and so does golf. Do I need a study proving that there is a direct correlation between golf scores and surgery skill? No, just as I don’t need studies to come to all of the other conclusions that get me through life.
Exactly. And with no other information, it’s more reasonable to go with the one that needed higher test scores than to pretend that information is totally irrelevant.
You just said that we are often correct to presume that “smart people do well on tests, and are good at what they eventually do.” That says a lot.
You’d have to prove that first.
What don’t you understand about “hypothetical”? The situation was not knowing anything else than that blacks don’t need as high a score on their MCATs. We can also add in the further information that blacks under perform whites on tests “into the post-medical school licensing exams (called the USMLE) and into the Specialty Board exams.”. Given no information besides those facts, I think it’s reasonable to want to see a white surgeon hovering over you in an emergency situation than a black one.
I don’t think so. I think discussions about Affirmative Action are more about the unfairness that exists when blacks are favored over whites because the color of their skin.
Exactly. That’s the problem (even more so with testing). We shouldn’t think you can test and quantify these things with such accuracy. Not to a point where we are bemoaning the inferior scores of minority practitioners that can still effectively perform.
They can tell you plenty of things. They can tell you if you have poor eyesight or if you have cancer. When it comes to measuring performance, they are only moderately effective, and are too easily manipulated and over-relied upon. That’s why you have people spending $2.5 billion a year to prepare for them, and also why you get people like Ryan Leaf or Barry Zito.
Recent relevant performance is often a good indicator. I was lumping two points together before. However, there should still be some acknowledgment that those recommendations and experience does not guarantee anything in the future. It’s probably the best indicator we have, but that does not mean you shouldn’t question it.
Which you did, but then managed to make your own error.
It already has been presented. More importantly, the burden of proof is on you, not me.
Then you will continue to walk though life as a person blinded by biases.
No it’s not more reasonable since one’s MCAT scores don’t tell us anything about the quality of the doctor. It’s just a more alluring bias. Is this really that hard for you to understand?
It says that the your (our) biases will not make us look like fools as often as a broken clock will. I would still contend that it is not particularly reliable.
It has been in several specific examples including the New Haven case. Why don’t you answer the question instead of taking your ball and going home?
I am aware of the sensitivity of this topic.
I’m ok with not trying to argue anyone out of their personal belief that it cannot be so, although I reject outright any inference that those of us who believe differences are genetic must have negative motives.
For those of you for whom the evidence is “overwhelming” that various nurturing factors explain differences among populations, have at it.
The truth has a way of coming out. In the instance at hand, I don’t think we’re more than a quarter of a century or so from finding–or failing to find–any relevant genes. If we find all differences among populations are environmental, I for one will be delighted, and I’ll be delighted to live in a world where we don’t have to have race-based AA to make up for what mother nature shortchanged.
I believe the differences are genetic, and I find the evidence convincing. For me the outcome of the New Haven test is ordinary, and expected, and in line with tens of thousands of other tests. I don’t find the reason for it “elusive” at all. I don’t have to try and make a living pretending what is not true–that all groups will perform equally–is true, like the test’s marketers.
I have the luxury of simply sitting back and watch society slowly figure it out. And I have the responsibility–which I take seriously–of being honest about what I see as the obvious answer, and lobbying for a society which takes into account those innate differences by creating pathways for all to succeed.
If the rest of you want to await the Inuits’ turn to dominate basketball, the blacks’ turn to overrun STEM Phd programs and the whites’ return to track and field, go right ahead.
What would be the pathways for all to succeed? Should there be a caste system? I do not want to debate with you, I sincerely want to understand your point-of-view.
