Save the Phenomena!

Last Halloween, the psychologists Wendy Williams and Stephen Ceci wrote an op-ed in New York Times claiming that “academic science isn’t sexist.” Among other things, they suggest that bias doesn’t occur in hiring, writing of “alleged” hiring bias. In a longer article, Ceci and three co-authors claim that “the evidence in support of biased hiring as a cause of under-representation is not well supported, and even points in the opposite direction.” The same evidence is interpreted as a “female hiring advantage” in Williams and Ceci’s “2:1 Faculty Preference for Women on STEM Tenure Track.”

I think the reason why this evidence “points in the opposite direction” is that Ceci et al. do not “save the phenomena” by accounting for crucial details of the findings they cite. Thus, these findings may not be consistent with the findings of Williams and Ceci’s experimental study. This raises concerns about the ecologically validity of the experimental study, e.g., that it may be not realistic to assume that a strong female applicant will often be described as “creative” or “a powerhouse.”

Here are details.