This is true, but links to a number of key studies would certainly be better than nothing. I’d like to follow up on the claims of the book, but I’m not about to spring for the cost of the hardcover.
I’ll admit to being skeptical that “the actual evidence is that beliefs about group differences tend to be highly accurate and proportional.” I suspect that this is true in certain domains, and not in others. My priors for any book of the sort being referenced, which draws on legitimate research to paint a grand narrative in opposition to the general impression of a field suggest that
*It’s very likely that the common wisdom of the field is wrong, or at least not on as steady ground as one might otherwise believe.
*It’s also very likely that the book leaves out countervailing evidence which doesn’t fit the grand narrative, and the reality is messier, and less easily resolved with a single clear vision, than the author would have readers believe.
Your general impression is about a hyper-politicized topic. ‘Most stereotypes are accurate’ is exactly the sort of technical claim which goes against political sacred cows I would expect researchers in a field to not play up and the few counter-examples get a great deal of press as proof of certain sacred cows. I see this all the time in intelligence-related stuff: a study claiming IQ gains or that IQ is not correlated with something gets publicized, while the studies showing the opposite get ignored or misinterpreted; hence you run into people who think that the general impression of the field is that IQ has been debunked, while it’s never been in better shape and tied to more things and closer to being nailed down into specific aspects of the brain and genes.
I see the same thing all the time as well, but I’m also used to seeing people drawing grand narratives based on an opposition to biased research which are, themselves, biased research. The fact that there are political reasons for scientists to downplay any research which indicates the accuracy of stereotypes is not sufficient to disabuse my skepticism in this case.
ETA: There’s plenty of intellectual status to be sought in meta-contrarianism. That being the case, I think one should be wary of adjusting too much on the knowledge that there are strong political biases favoring the position a person is arguing against.
You mean an entire book’s worth of citations, probably at least into the hundreds based on the summaries of chapters?
I suspect there’s no one convenient location for them at all, gated or ungated...
This is true, but links to a number of key studies would certainly be better than nothing. I’d like to follow up on the claims of the book, but I’m not about to spring for the cost of the hardcover.
I’ll admit to being skeptical that “the actual evidence is that beliefs about group differences tend to be highly accurate and proportional.” I suspect that this is true in certain domains, and not in others. My priors for any book of the sort being referenced, which draws on legitimate research to paint a grand narrative in opposition to the general impression of a field suggest that
*It’s very likely that the common wisdom of the field is wrong, or at least not on as steady ground as one might otherwise believe.
*It’s also very likely that the book leaves out countervailing evidence which doesn’t fit the grand narrative, and the reality is messier, and less easily resolved with a single clear vision, than the author would have readers believe.
Your general impression is about a hyper-politicized topic. ‘Most stereotypes are accurate’ is exactly the sort of technical claim which goes against political sacred cows I would expect researchers in a field to not play up and the few counter-examples get a great deal of press as proof of certain sacred cows. I see this all the time in intelligence-related stuff: a study claiming IQ gains or that IQ is not correlated with something gets publicized, while the studies showing the opposite get ignored or misinterpreted; hence you run into people who think that the general impression of the field is that IQ has been debunked, while it’s never been in better shape and tied to more things and closer to being nailed down into specific aspects of the brain and genes.
I see the same thing all the time as well, but I’m also used to seeing people drawing grand narratives based on an opposition to biased research which are, themselves, biased research. The fact that there are political reasons for scientists to downplay any research which indicates the accuracy of stereotypes is not sufficient to disabuse my skepticism in this case.
ETA: There’s plenty of intellectual status to be sought in meta-contrarianism. That being the case, I think one should be wary of adjusting too much on the knowledge that there are strong political biases favoring the position a person is arguing against.