Study sees racial bias in calling fouls - Page 5

MicroBob · #41 05-02-2007, 05:21 PM

Different sports have similar dress-codes to the NBA.

It's part of being professional.

Michael Smith is on Around the Horn right now talking about the study.
He says that 72% of NBA players are black players...therefore there will be more fouls called against black players.
He actually said, "What are you going to do? Limit the number of black players somehow so they don't get as many fouls called on them?"

Does he play poker? If so, anyone know where?

Fels krone · #42 05-02-2007, 05:21 PM

I really dont think that slight difference in calls directed by race even compares to the number of biased calls on actual players. If you looked at the number of fouls in a game, the .2 difference resulting from race is minimal next the difference if Kobe Bryant or Yao Ming are on the court.

I dont like to make judgements without reading the paper, but its hard not to. From my experience, acedemia will claim results unless they have fully proven otherwise. In other words; if they werent conclusive on proving no racial bias existed, its very likely they would show data that the racial bias was present in the NBA.

Needle77 · #43 05-02-2007, 05:24 PM

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Michael Smith is on Around the Horn right now talking about the study.
He says that 72% of NBA players are black players...therefore there will be more fouls called against black players.
He actually said, "What are you going to do? Limit the number of black players somehow so they don't get as many fouls called on them?"

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I was watching this too and I agreed with him. And I was kind of enjoying ATH today, well at least until Smith went "I beat you last time homey."

Max Raker · #44 05-02-2007, 05:28 PM

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I really dont think that slight difference in calls directed by race even compares to the number of biased calls on actual players. If you looked at the number of fouls in a game, the .2 difference resulting from race is minimal next the difference if Kobe Bryant or Yao Ming are on the court.

I dont like to make judgements without reading the paper, but its hard not to. From my experience, acedemia will claim results unless they have fully proven otherwise. In other words; if they werent conclusive on proving no racial bias existed, its very likely they would show data that the racial bias was present in the NBA.

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What field is your experience in acedamia? I have found in my experience that peer reviewed journals do a really good job of making sure the authors conclusions are justified.

MicroBob · #45 05-02-2007, 05:41 PM

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Michael Smith is on Around the Horn right now talking about the study.
He says that 72% of NBA players are black players...therefore there will be more fouls called against black players.
He actually said, "What are you going to do? Limit the number of black players somehow so they don't get as many fouls called on them?"

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I was watching this too and I agreed with him. And I was kind of enjoying ATH today, well at least until Smith went "I beat you last time homey."

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I didn't catch any other part of the show. Just turned up the volume when I saw they were talking about refs.

You agreed with the idea that because 72% of the players in the NBA are black then that means more fouls will be called on them?
Seriously?

Also - I haven't read the article or the study. But I have no doubt at all that some amount of racial bias does play a factor in foul-calls.
The refs are only human. And sometimes they show they are pretty stupid humans at that.

Some calls are so close with such hard contact that they really could go either way.
Other calls are so blatantly bad with guy A slamming into guy B but the foul being called on guy B that it's pretty mind-blowing.

It's only natural for refs to accidentally have some bias towards people they like no matter how hard they try not to.
And I suspect some refs are going to be more likely to get along with people of their own race.

I hope the NBA looks a bit deeper into this situation so they can address and look into ways to officiate their games better.
I've been to some NBA games where the foul calls were just incredibly bad.

Swipe at air: Whistle! Foul!
Elbow a guy in the chest and/or throw him to the floor: No biggie. Play on.

thatpfunk · #46 05-02-2007, 05:48 PM

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The dress code is a hijack from the study however...

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Only because the study design was so pathetic it's not really worthy of discussion. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

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what was pathetic about the study design?

teamdonkey · #47 05-02-2007, 05:48 PM

about half way through it now, thought i'd answer this one:

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A technical foul study would be WAAAAY more interesting than this, I don't know why they didn't do that. I wouldn't be surprised if the correlation was 3-5 times stronger than for regular fouls.

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they do look at flagrants and technicals. The same pattern emerges, but because of their rarity and smaller sample size, they aren't as statistically valid. For flagarants the effect IS statistically signifigant, but it isn't exactly a home run.

Needle77 · #48 05-02-2007, 05:55 PM

Bob,

Sorry I'm multi-tabling, reading 2+2, and watching TV. I thought he was stating the obvious by, "there will be more fouls on black players because there are more black players." I thought it was a dumb arguement thus my random comment. I am teh suck at multi-tasking.

Fels krone · #49 05-02-2007, 05:55 PM

My experience in acedemia has been with papers that are biological. Peer reviewers will look at a paper and its results but will not be familiar with all of the details involved with the actual research. There are control groups and experimental groups with thier differences and similarities explained, but there are many other variables that go unaccounted for. Sometimes when results are slight, the hypthosis is claimed correct; when in fact any number of those unaccounted variables could have caused the results to skew.

So I dont feel all that great about judging this paper without reading it, but with so many ways to stack the variables and such a small number in the results, I still have my doubts.

mo42nyy · #50 05-02-2007, 05:58 PM

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At first I thought this study was BS but I see there is indeed something to it. It should never be any surprise to anyone who knows anything about race relations that white refs would be biased in favor of whites.
A technical foul study would be WAAAAY more interesting than this, I don't know why they didn't do that. I wouldn't be surprised if the correlation was 3-5 times stronger than for regular fouls.
The real question is, why are 85% of the players black while most of the refs, and most of the coaches and executives white? More importantly why are the blatantly racist policies of David Stern such as the dress code continually unchallenged?

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Because African-Americans are physically different than whites in that they can generally jump higher and run faster which makes them better at basketball. However, they have no such advantage for coaching, refereeing or being an executive; therefore those numbers more closely mirror the general population which is predominantly white.

Why do people have to look for racism when it's not even there? And the dress code's racist? Give me a break. I think you're a racist if you're saying that it's somehow harder for a black person to put on a collared shirt for a post-game interview than it is for a white person.

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Because there is a double standard. It is acceptable to say black are better than whites at basketball. However MLB swears there is a crisis since only 8-9 percent of the league is black- but if you look at the numbers of American born players the percentage of blacks is the same as it was 25 years ago.