Comment by Manuel_D
5 days ago
Except in plenty of cases, Paul's claim is demonstrably true. People vastly overestimate the racial disparity in police uses of force, for example: https://manhattan.institute/article/perceptions-are-not-real...
When people were asked whether male-dominated or female-dominated industries were sexist, they vastly overestimated the degree of gender discrimination as compared to the experimentally observed rates (and in the case of male-dominated industries, they got the direction of discrimination backwards): https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S07495978230005... from https://id.elsevier.com/as/authorization.oauth2?platSite=SD%...
The whole pattern of people saying what amounts to "the fact that you disagree with me means you haven't bothered to examine the problem" is a very unfortunate trend. Did it occur to you that perhaps he did do the work on studying the problem, and came to a different conclusion?
The Manhattan Institute is so biased that it is not worth spending the time to actually engage with their articles and determine their truth, because their game is not truth, it is politics. If what they say is true, there will likely be other, less politically-motivated groups that say the same.
Sure, there are other studies that reach the same finding: https://www.skeptic.com/research-center/reports/Research-Rep...
But I wouldn't be surprised if this is also discarded as biased. The issue is that the allegation of bias is often justified by the outcomes of the research, thus statements like "the research showing people overestimate racism is biased" becomes tautological.
Also, do you have specific critiques of the study? Or is your dismissal solely based on the authorship of the study?
Thank you for that source, I do not discard it as biased.
While some people do, I am not choosing what sources are biased based on whether their findings align with my beliefs. I am choosing based on whether their results consistently align with a certain ideology or political stance, what their goals are, and where their money comes from.
The Manhattan Institute consistently publishes findings that align with American conservatism, their goal is explicitly to influence policy, and while we don't know exactly where their money comes from because they don't make that information public (which I think is generally a bad sign), information revealed by tax filings shows that most substantial donations are from conservatives. This is why I consider them to be biased.
I don't have any specific criticism of the study, because I did not spend the time to engage with it. I have limited lifetime, and I must choose where to spend it based on what is likely to be fruitful. I do not consider engaging with articles/studies from biased think tanks, whether liberal or conservative, likely to be fruitful.
“Less politically motivated groups” == “groups who happen to agree with what I already believe“.