The Jason Arday scandal, part deux

[KatiePricesKnickers]

As the book launch is coming, let the discussion continue.

First thread: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5563599-the-jason-arday-scandal?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=share
This is lifted from the thread in the education section, which is an interesting summary
https://www.ian-leslie.com/p/the-great-and-unfortunate-story-of?r=8w0woc&triedRedirect=true

Or AIBU with not letting this fade away?

You're not reading anything beyond that little excerpt are you? Are you not concerned that freedom of speech is bring eradicated by HE and the police. You do remember that police warned somebody off investigating Arday. Freedom of investigation was once welcomed in esteemed universities. You say he is racist, others disagree. Be happy, the true scholar has been sacked. Shame Cambridge didn't have the balls to sack a fraudulent academic when they had the chance.

I’m not really qualified to say. Cofnas says IQ test outcomes such as non verbal reasoning predict success at school, university and whether or not you become a top academic. You could say that is “intelligence” or you could just call them IQ tests. He says average IQ scores are lower for the black population and grades are lower for schools and almost none make the level that is normally required to get into Harvard. Make of that what you will.

You do realise that test performance is affected by educational opportunity and social conditions — exactly the inequalities DEI policies seek to address? Cofnas (and those supporting him on this thread ) are taking the effects of existing racial inequality and presenting them as evidence of innate racial differences in intelligence, while condemning attempts to address those inequalities. That’s not a neutral reading of the data; it’s using inequality to justify a racist conclusion about the people disadvantaged by it.

I didn’t employ him. Perhaps, God forbid, they welcomed his lived experience?

Well there are people like Cofnas that spend time testing the statements you just made. It is open for them to conclude that the facts ie the data don’t fit your statements. That’s science I’m afraid.

Except DEI doesn't address inequality - it skews it. Then we get establishments such as Cambridge ending up with egg on their face. This was all meant to be hushed up. If you're happy to see education going in that direction, good for you @Sunnibee I'm not. I'm not happy to see students being told to quit complaining for the sake of diversity. I've heard that somewhere before.

Well there are people like Cofnas that spend time testing the statements you just made. It is open for them to conclude that the facts ie the data don’t fit your statements. That’s science I’m afraid.

Calling the use of statistical data to justify racist conclusions “science” doesn’t make it scientific, and it doesn’t make the conclusion any less racist.

You have not presented evidence that he started with a racist premise and picked data dishonestly to fit this premise. He just followed the data and what he is saying is that IQ data should not be ignored in explaining why almost no one who is black can qualify for Harvard without affirmative action. I think if want to refute his point you are going to have explain why IQ data should be ignored in populations where everything else is held equal.

I don’t need to prove his intentions to challenge his argument. The data show differences in outcomes; they don’t prove innate racial differences in intelligence. Those outcomes are themselves affected by differences in educational opportunity. Using those inequalities to justify racist conclusions that reinforce the same inequalities isn’t science — it’s racism.

(Also btw, Harvard doesn't determine its admissions based on IQ tests, nor do they claim to, nor should they).

'Lived experience ' isn't a qualification for a professorial chair at Cambridge. That's the point. Plus it's clear that his claimed 'lived experience' was made up, so even if that had been a criteria he didn't meet it.

The two other candidates for that post were women of colour, but their 'lived experience' (is lived experience a euphemism for being non white?) didn't get them the job.

He is reporting that there are differences in IQ scores. As I said, you can call that intelligence or just IQ. What you can't do is deny that the data exists. Of course, people do. That is what Cofnas is pointing out. Just tell everyone why IQ scores of population should be ignored either because it is biased or some other reason and you're good.

Nobody is denying that differences in IQ scores exist. The question is what those differences mean. IQ tests measure performance on particular tests; they don’t establish innate differences in intelligence based on race. You can’t simply declare the latter and then demand that everyone explain why the data should be “ignored.” Taking differences in test outcomes, assuming they reflect innate racial differences, and then using that assumption to justify racist ideas and reinforce existing inequalities is not science. It is not “following the data”. It is racism.

You don't understand academic enquiry, do you?

The facts aren't racist. Facts don't have opinions. The fact is that analysis of data shows that if you used IQ as the criteria by which people got accepted to Harvard, far fewer black people would be accepted and lots more Asian people would be accepted, than actually happens

You can argue that IQ doesn't accurately measure intelligence. You can argue about why the difference in IQ exists. You can even argue that other criteria than intelligence should be part of the decision of who to admit. But if asking the question, 'how come many more black people get into Harvard than would if admission was solely based on the current measure of intelligence?' is not allowed, if asking that question is forbidden because it might produce answers we don't want to hear, then you might as well dismantle the academy now because there's no point any more.

And the use of DEI to deliberately skew admissions to Harvard, in order to make them look how you think they should, isn't equal, diverse or inclusive; every person admitted who didn't make the grade is taking a place from a person who did make the grade. Just like Jason Arday taking a Chair at Cambridge meant a qualified person didn't get one.

It's not victimless to try to engineer what you decide is right, in doing so you steal from a person who met the criteria in order to give to someone who didn't. Moving the goalposts, or obscuring the goalposts, is part of what got us into this situation. Cambridge would never have looked twice at Jason Arday if they had recruited without an unspoken agenda that had nothing to do with the qualifications for the job.

Hallelujah 👏

I don’t understand your argument at all. Harvard doesn’t base its admissions on IQ test outcomes, nor does it claim to, nor should it.

So what you’re doing is taking test outcomes that are themselves influenced by inequality, treating them as evidence of who is “rightfully” qualified to attend Harvard, and then using those outcomes to justify racial conclusions about who does and doesn’t belong there. That isn’t “academic inquiry". It is taking unequal outcomes and turning them into a justification for racial inequality. That is simply racist.

The way it works is that you take a sample of people with all their demographics including educational background, parental background, income, IQ, all of that stuff that you think of that predicts educational outcomes and you find that IQ predicts educational attainment holding everything else equal. Then you check on IQ level of different groups and check if they have the predicted education outcomes and you find that they do. Then you can say that the outcomes of one group even controlling for their other demographics have a higher or lower IQ and you suggest that this explains why they have different educational attainment. That is all it is. It could be used for football players or cheerleaders or gamers or left handed people. It's not racism. It's just data.

im not sure what it is that you are trying to argue now?
Are you suggesting that this data proves that IQ is an accurate measure of innate intelligence? Or that performance in IQ tests predicts performance in other educational tests?
What do you mean by "educational attainment"?

IQ predicts matriculation grades that are used to determine university entry. Different populations have different IQ averages which should predict lower average test scores - which it does. So IQ should not be ignored as a cause of why so few black students attain the required level to make it into Harvard. I think that is what he is saying.

Not helpful!

But university admission isn’t determined by matriculation grades alone. Cofnas is assuming that the racial composition predicted from average IQ is what Harvard’s student body should look like, and then treating any deviation from that prediction as evidence of unfair admissions. But that conclusion doesn’t follow from the IQ/grades correlation. You’d first have to establish that IQ-derived predictions are an appropriate definition of merit, that they accurately capture the abilities relevant to Harvard admission, and that Harvard’s student body should be expected to mirror those racial predictions. None of that is established simply by showing that IQ correlates with grades.

IQ is not being used to determine admission. It's an independent variable explaining grades on a population level. Admission is determined by grades with or without affirmative action. Without affirmative action, the number of black students falls to zero. Why is this? Could be many reasons. One could be average IQ is lower in that overall population. That is worth examining. If analyses show that the reason for the low admittance of black students is due to population IQ level not systemic racism then you will lower the IQ level of the student body if you force the number of black students up and the number of asian students down. Some people think that is a lowering of academic standards to make the outcomes fit your ideology. Same goes for the colour of the skin of Professorial chairs hence Arday.