re: NYT: Bell curves, regression to the mean more important than environment

This quote kind or irritated me:

quote:

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The disparities that remain also can’t be explained by differences in cognitive ability, an argument made by people who cite racial gaps in test scores that appear for both black boys and girls. If such inherent differences existed by race, “you’ve got to explain to me why these putative ability differences aren’t handicapping women,” said David Grusky, a Stanford sociologist who has reviewed the research.

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Well first of all, there is this a thing in statistics called an interaction, so the fact that the disparities between males and females is different may just mean that there is an interaction by gender.

And although it doesn’t appear to include a measure of cognitively ability in the study, there are a number of controls that are number of variables that were used as controls that are correlated and believed to be a results of (income) ability.

So it’s just asinine to look at the gender differences and somehow ignore the gender variable itself and instead question a predictor variable that doesn’t seem to even be directly included.

Edit: In fact his most recent tweet from 3 days ago is about gender inequality, so the fact that he doesn’t consider that when reviewing a study about racial inequality is pretty telling.