UW statistician, philosopher win prize for detecting bias in peer review

Story here.

Research in social psychology suggests that, when evaluating job applicants along multiple criteria (like education and experience), evaluators prioritize whichever criterion favors the in-group applicant (white/male) versus the out-group (black/female) applicant, which has the effect of boosting the white/male applicant’s overall score,” Lee explained. “Analogously, we hypothesized that at NIH, white grant applicants receive higher overall impact scores than minority applicants in cases where they have received identical (or sufficiently similar) scores on sub-criteria.

Letter of Support from Greco, Howard, Kvanvig, Murphy, and Rea

An open letter of support has been published at Daily Nous, from five senior male philosophers, to victims of harassment in philosophy and their supporters. A quote:

As things currently stand, there are very substantial professional and personal risks associated with addressing sexual misconduct either informally or through formal university channels—including, as we have now seen, the risk of being sued for defamation. Moreover, these risks accrue not only to victims but to those who try to support them in seeking to have their grievances addressed. Unsurprisingly, many victims have felt as if they have no recourse, many who might otherwise have supported them have remained silent; and the culture of silence understandably contributes to the impression that there are really very few within our profession who are much concerned either about the prevalence of sexual misconduct within our discipline or about the risks associated with seeking to have it addressed.

We write, therefore, to say publicly that these developments are lamentable, to voice our support of rights to report concerns of misconduct, and to ask the philosophical community to join with us in supporting both the victims of sexual misconduct who have the courage to file a formal report, and the faculty who provide them with support.

Commenting is open at Daily Nous, and other philosophers are adding their public support for the contents of the letter in the comments thread.

Gender and Punishing Norm Violations

A study of how bystanders react to norm violation suggests that in general people would rather withhold help from violators than directly punish them. However:

The gender of the violator also appeared to play a role in the kind of punishment chosen: direct punishment was used more against women, and indirect punishment against men, regardless of the gender of the observer.

What WAM!’s Doing About What Twitter’s Like

Details here:

The group created a form for women to use to report misogynist or any other bigoted harassment. But here’s the essential part:

WAM! will escalate validated reports to Twitter and track Twitter’s responses to different kinds of gendered harassment.  At the end of the pilot test period, WAM! will analyze the data collected and use it to work with Twitter to better understand how gendered harassment intersects with other types of harassment, how those attacks function on their platform, and to improve Twitter’s responses to it.

Hanna (and FP) in the Huffington Post

From Sexual Freedom is No Excuse For Sexual Assault, by Marina Adshade:

As a Canadian, I would like to take this opportunity to say I am sorry. One of our own recently chose to frame the punishment he received from his employers for his personal conduct as nothing more than discrimination against those with non-traditional sexual preferences. According this man, his accusers are women with whom he sought consensual, if perhaps unconventional, relationships who later sought punish him with their allegations. In a lengthy online missive, he argued that his particular sexual preferences are a human right, and as such he should be protected from professional discipline based on his sexual behavior.

The man I am speaking of is NOT Jian Ghomeshi, the Canadian radio celebrity who claimed that he lost his job because his employer found his preference for rough sex “unbecoming of a prominent host on the CBC.” The man I’m speaking of is Robert Hanna, the Canadian-born University of Colorado philosophy professor who was suspended last fall, without pay, after he was accused by two women in his department, one a faculty member and one a graduate student, of sending unwelcome sexually explicit emails.

Men Explore Whether Life Is Getting More Complex

From the description of “Complexity and the Arrow of Time“, published by CUP:

There is a widespread assumption that the universe in general, and life in particular, is ‘getting more complex with time’. This book brings together a wide range of experts in science, philosophy and theology and unveils their joint effort in exploring this idea.

The wide range of editors and authors exploring this idea in this book includes only men.

“It’s About Your Predatory Friends.”

“This is, I think, what we’re really talking about when we talk about bystander intervention. It’s not about protecting your friends from predatory strangers — which is often how these scenarios are framed. It’s about your predatory friends. What are you going to do about them?

…

There is, I think, a real fear people have about being wrong if and when they believe women. And so a reflexive tendency to doubt women when they come forward begins to look a lot like caution. But what it amounts to, and this is what Pallett and Bady both made clear, isn’t the presumption of innocence or a respect for due process, but a process through which we can ignore what’s in front of us to protect ourselves, to protect the ideas we have about our friends, the ideas we have about rape and the kinds of men who hurt women.”

From “Jian Ghomeshi is My Friend, and Jian Ghomeshi Beats Women” at Salon.

On A “Standard Narrative” About The PGR

A commentary by Bharath Vallabha on the function of the Philosophical Gourmet Report has been posted at Richard Heck’s blog. In the piece Vallabha invites reflection on a “standard narrative” about the PGR, namely that it provides a service to students. (Commenting is available at Richard’s blog, for those who wish to comment.)

On Halloween Costumes That Reinforce Sex Differences

“We need to sex-mark, and get socially confused when we cannot.  As Frye puts it, our utterances and interactions become unintelligible because “Sex-marking is not optional; it is as obligatory as it is pervasive.” And it is easiest to sex mark when we separate girls and boys so widely that there is no possibility for confusion.  Frye contends that “The pressure on each of us to guess or determine the sex of everybody else both generates and is exhibited in a great pressure on each of us to inform everybody all the time of our sex.” This, however, dramatically limits the dreams and fantasies of boys and girls, especially at Halloween which is precisely a time for liminality, for occupying the space between fantasy and reality …”

Seasonal reflections from Alison Reiheld.

The Free Speech of Women

“The Emma You Are Next site isn’t just a prank. It’s a civil rights issue, an assault on the free speech of women.”

The academic world, including much of the philosophy world, has a lot to say about the importance of free speech at the moment.

The free speech of women is free speech.

The ways in which it gets denied (by both legal and illegal means) can, sometimes, look different from the ways the free speech of men gets denied.

That does not mean it is a morally comfortable combination of stances to ignore assaults on the free speech of women while defending free speech.

I am glad that philosophers care about free speech and proud that many of us defend it loudly. I think we should do the same when the free speech in question is that of women.

I think this because I think that women are people.