[MyTurn2Raise]

lots of reactions to this as I'm just finding out.

I did read the study and understand it. For those that don't know, I was a PhD student in accounting and spent quite a bit of time reading studies just like this one - both in topic and statistical methods used.

Some made fun of a guy doing thesis work and such on this. It's actually a great field--racial discrimination in an environment with strong monitoring and feedback that has a rich supply of data. Good luck finding much better spots.

work looks solid--they've controlled for nearly everything any of the silly pundits who have no basis in statistics have said on tv.

I'm surprised there is this much of a backlash. I thought it was common sense that officials were racist among other things. I'm actually a bit surprised the effect was as low as the study showed, although it is still a material effect.

I do wish the authors had explored whether players responded 'strategicly' more. They did show that they don't respond 'oppositionally,' but where is the same treatment of stats for Strategic.

Horrible of the NYTimes to release this while it is still a working paper. A paper needs to go through peer review and be admitted to a major journal. The work looks good from my review, but a stamp from the 3 or so out of 15 people in the world that would be best to evaluate that speaks volumes. If you are not in academia, it's tough to explain the long and arduous process of going from a working paper to a published article. I never got near that far in my own studies, but my roommate just got a major publication hit. I am familiar with the process.


if they (the authors) were just looking for results that didn't generalize to external environments, they could look at calls for the home team, especially in the last 10 minutes of a contested affair.



There is NO incentive for the authors to show racial bias. The beauty of their whole study is that the results are interesting whether there is a bias or not. If there is NO bias, they could still publish the work as it shows that a highly monitored environment with feedback can mitigate racial discrimination.


What does concern me, as a fan, most about what I've heard so far is:
1) the NBA's flat out rejection
2) the pregame meeting of officials--
this is just horrible as it predisposes officials and biases their thinking throughout a game (not talking race here, just in general). For instance, if the meeting covers such and such team playing more aggressive of late, officials will definitely see the game through a much different lens.





None of this is surprising in the least. Human beings are very far from being objective automatons. VERY FAR