gringo_911:

Would you care to explain what is "racist" in what I said? Cause you sure sound like anti-Russian bigot.

The fact that you don't consider the term "race pimping" to be racist, tells us everything we need to know

I'm not looking to "make the call," I'm looking to get a basic sense of the questions and what they are.

Oh please. Of course you are looking to "make the call". You want to know whether or not Ricci had a case or not by "getting a sense" of the questions so that you can dismiss the claims that the test was biased.

Your point about anti-biotics is an interesting one. Someone without expertise in the area (and yes you can have expertise without a degree) is less likely to be able to distinguish between when to use ciprofloxin and its associated risks and when it isn't going to help (flu). As an MD you well know that patients come in expecting a prescription even when one won't do them any good. Their BELIEF more often than not, trumps reason and logic.

I've never been hired as an expert witness, though I've been prepped (fortunately never had to sit) as a rebuttal to expert testimony - so I'm familiar with the rigorousness of the knowledge test. And that is PRECISELY my point. Neither you nor I are really qualified to sit as Expert Witnesses in this case. And the Gringo's of the world are dismissing those who WERE brought in as "race pimps".

If you had bothered to look at any of the overview literature on how bias can creep into testing we wouldn't be having this dance. The point is that neither you nor I are experts in this area so assessing how much and how racial bias affects a particular standardized test.

The SoCal example was based on architecture. Gabled roofs are extremely rare in SoCal, whereas common in New England. So it requires extra cognitive processing to parse what the actual content of the question is for someone who does not understand a gable is part of a roof.

Wrapping a question in culturally contextualized content has long been understood as bringing unnecessary bias into the situation. It is afterall the staple of almost all "period dramas" - be it Dangerous Liasons or Sense and Sensibility. Context is everything.

To then pretend that somehow the same does not apply in the USA, where minorities and women were only admitted to a less restrictive context within the past 2 generations is simply disingenuous - yet that is the claim that Gringo is making and upon which Kennedy, ScAlito, Roberts and Thomas based their ruling.

What the Supreme Court did, more specifically what 5 old white men did, was to ADD NEW LAW to the existing law. They added a new clause to Section2 Subchapter(k) so that instead of reading:

k) Burden of proof in disparate impact cases
(1)(A) An unlawful employment practice based on disparate impact
is established under this subchapter only if -
(i) a complaining party demonstrates that a respondent uses a
particular employment practice that causes a disparate impact on
the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin and
the respondent fails to demonstrate that the challenged practice
is job related for the position in question and consistent with
business necessity; or
(ii) the complaining party makes the demonstration described in
subparagraph (C) with respect to an alternative employment
practice and the respondent refuses to adopt such alternative
employment practice.

It now reads

k) Burden of proof in disparate impact cases
(1)(A) An unlawful employment practice based on disparate impact
is established under this subchapter only if -
(i) a complaining party demonstrates that a respondent uses a
particular employment practice that causes a disparate impact on
the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin and
the respondent who is required to attempt to demonstrate that
the challenged practice is based in a business necessity
fails to demonstrate that the challenged practice
is job related for the position in question and consistent with
business necessity; or,<del or> Only after a failure to demonstrate
the challenged practice conforms can any accomodation as listed below be attempted
(ii) the complaining party makes the demonstration described in
subparagraph (C) with respect to an alternative employment
practice and the respondent refuses to adopt such alternative
employment practice.

That's new law. That's not a reading of the existing law nor its legislative intent. It changes the level of proof a challenger must bring.

Nope - I just want a reasonable explanation of how and why a test is supposed to be biased. "Trust me, it is biased, but you can't possibly understand why without six years study" is just not good enough. I agree - I would not be able to sit as an expert - but I might one day be a juror. And you can be sure I'd demand a better explanation than I am getting from you here.

I'm capable of "getting it." I can make up a rough example... send a few Americans to the UK, and have them sit a test where the question asks what size spanner to use for the following nuts... Most Americans, I guess, don't know that "spanner" is the English term for "wrench." So there's no difficulty in my view in getting people to understand how bias can creep in where cultural context may matter.

This is a highly contentious and difficult realm. People deserve to be able to see what the tests were, and to have a rational explanation as to how and why someone would believe them to be biased. What we're disagreeing on is the level to which is reasonable to expect a person to see and understand the claims of bias in the context of real examples. If that can't be done, then I fear we're into the realms of revealed truths, where only the chosen mystics may have the sacred knowledge.

degsme:

What the Supreme Court did, more specifically what 5 old white men did, was to ADD NEW LAW to the existing law. They added a new clause to Section2 Subchapter(k) so that instead of reading:

k) Burden of proof in disparate impact cases
(1)(A) An unlawful employment practice based on disparate impact
is established under this subchapter only if -
(i) a complaining party demonstrates that a respondent uses a
particular employment practice that causes a disparate impact on
the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin and
the respondent fails to demonstrate that the challenged practice
is job related for the position in question and consistent with
business necessity; or
(ii) the complaining party makes the demonstration described in
subparagraph (C) with respect to an alternative employment
practice and the respondent refuses to adopt such alternative
employment practice.

It now reads

k) Burden of proof in disparate impact cases
(1)(A) An unlawful employment practice based on disparate impact
is established under this subchapter only if -
(i) a complaining party demonstrates that a respondent uses a
particular employment practice that causes a disparate impact on
the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin and
the respondent who is required to attempt to demonstrate that
the challenged practice is based in a business necessity
fails to demonstrate that the challenged practice
is job related for the position in question and consistent with
business necessity; or,<del or> Only after a failure to demonstrate
the challenged practice conforms can any accomodation as listed below be attempted
(ii) the complaining party makes the demonstration described in
subparagraph (C) with respect to an alternative employment
practice and the respondent refuses to adopt such alternative
employment practice.

That's new law. That's not a reading of the existing law nor its legislative intent. It changes the level of proof a challenger must bring.

Degme is way off base with the above. In order to alter the law regarding disparate impact the Court would reasonable have had to decide a disparate impact case. No such case was brought.

The case that was brought was one of disparate treatment. The court basically said that disparate impact is not a defense to disparate treatment unless there is a strong evidenciary basis.

So Degsmes annotations on the text of the law are unfounded based on the decision.

...but I have yet to see someone post here a plausible question that might appear in a test that would selectively disadvantage "black" candidates, or explain, in general terms, how such tests may serve to help one particular group. Pointing to google and saying "there must be something out there..." is not a valid answer.

That it is a highly contentious realm doesn't make it difficult for experts. It DOES make it dificult for average persons. So there is no 'people deserve' any more than there is a "people require" every MD's diagnosis to elaborate on all of the reasoning and balancing processes involved.

I agree that we are in disagreement on what sort of claims of bias the avereage person can assess. Given that the majority of the public doesn't even have a BA, and half of them don't even have a HS Diploma, and of those that do have BAs, very very few have any sort of training in symbolic reasoning, its a bit hard to accept that the broader public will be informed by looking at these tests.

My guess is that we're not going to agree on this... I believe that it is in the public interest to release the questions, and let people interpret them as they will. Wise readers will take counsel from knowledgable commentators, others will listen to blowhards like Limbaugh and Olbermann.

I would add, though, that generally the argument for keeping things out of the public domain because the public isn't capable of understanding the material is not likely to win in the end.

degsme:

That it is a highly contentious realm doesn't make it difficult for experts. It DOES make it dificult for average persons. So there is no 'people deserve' any more than there is a "people require" every MD's diagnosis to elaborate on all of the reasoning and balancing processes involved.

The supreme court ARE experts though, and they agreed with Ricci's side.

I agree that we are in disagreement on what sort of claims of bias the avereage person can assess. Given that the majority of the public doesn't even have a BA, and half of them don't even have a HS Diploma, and of those that do have BAs, very very few have any sort of training in symbolic reasoning, its a bit hard to accept that the broader public will be informed by looking at these tests.

Another shocking post by you. The general public that you don't think is competent to analyze this data is the same public that comprises the jury pool in the U.S. Here you are, a lawyer, implying that a jury of average Americans is INCOMPETENT to analyze the data presented to them in trials every day. If you have no faith in the ability of a jury to analyze data and make a fair decision, you chose the wrong career - by a long shot.

Degs, one thing I've learned in *my* career is that the average guy on the street can and does make very reasoned decisions in serious matters providing the data are presented to them in terms they understand. If you don't believe that to be true... man, that's a seriously misanthropic attitude! I didn't expect it from you.

The study of potential racial and gender bias in individual test items is a major research area today. The fact that research has established that total scores on ability and achievement tests are predictively unbiased raises the question of whether there is in fact any real bias at the item level. No theoretical rationale for expecting such bias has been advanced. It appears that findings of item bias (differential item functioning; DIP) can be explained by three factors: failure to control for measurement error in ability estimates, violations of the unidimensionality assumption required by DIP detection methods, and reliance on significance testing (causing tiny artifactual DIP effects to be statistically significant because sample sizes are very large). After taking into account these artifacts, there appears to be no evidence that items on currently used tests function differently in different racial and gender groups.

Hunter, J.E. & Schmidt, F.L. (2000). Racial and gender bias in ability and achievement tests. Resolving the apparent paradox. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 6, 151-158.

The article also mentions that identification of culturally loaded (potentially biased) items is notoriously difficult for both Black and White experts, professionally developed tests will likely be free of obviously biased items due to the rigors of development.

It'd be interesting to see the test, but I doubt there'd be any 'aha' revelations.

p.s. Hunter and Schmidt are two of the most respected researchers in the field of Industrial/Organizational Psychology and are more than qualified to speak on the subject. Well, Hunter died a few years ago, but I'm pretty sure Schmidt is still going strong.

"predictively unbiased" Sorry don't buy that this has been fully demonstrated at all.

Essentially this is just racial mythology repackaged as "science"

Well we probably won't agree, but I'm still curious if you can articulate more clearly what benefit is achieved by:

I believe that it is in the public interest to release the questions, and let people interpret them as they will

How is arming people with irrelevant data (since they lack the skills to make the analysis it is irrelevant data) "in the public interest"?

No SCOTUS is not expert in bias. Very few judges are close to expert in the realms they judge. That's why you have "expert testimony" and its associated extra legal weight.

SCOTUS is ostensibly 'expert' in the Constitution and the law. But here you have a case where they said it was Constitutional, but then got 4 different interpretations of the law. No "expert" ruling supporting Ricci got more than 2 unique votes whereas DeStefano's position was upheld by a plurality of 4 votes. Hardly a "consistent" view from the "experts".

The general public that you don't think is competent to analyze this data is the same public that comprises the jury pool in the U.S. Here you are, a lawyer, implying that a jury of average Americans is INCOMPETENT to analyze the data presented to them in trials every day

Largely they are. Ever sat in on Jury deliberations? 12 Angry Men overstates the articulateness and rationality of the participants.

That's why NH did and would take this to a Judge, not a jury (their option). (and I'm not a lawyer, I just grew up with the law, find it fascinating, and one of my sons is on his way to becoming an atty).

One thing I've learned in my career is that hte "average guy on the street" makes rather poor decisions, but the diversity of beliefs essentially offsets the irrationality.

A misanthrope doesn't like people. I genuinely like people. I just don't have a lot of respect for their ability to reason. Most of their decisions are not reasoned, but emoted simply because they lack the skills (and sometimes ability) and interest to actually reason.

Not even a "nice try" Tarkol.

Read the Ruling

The defendants responded that had they certified the test results, they could have faced Title VII liability for adopting a practice having a disparate impact on minority firefighters.
o o o

(b) Under Title VII, before an employer can engage in intentional discrimination for the asserted purpose of avoiding or remedying an unintentional, disparate impact, the employer must have a strong basis in evidence to believe it will be subject to disparate-impact liability if it fails to take the race-conscious, discriminatory action

Notice the underlined section. That text appears NOWHERE in the law OR the Legislative Intent at the time of signing.

It is created out of whole cloth by Kennedy, who REFUSES to rule as unconstitutional the idea that "an employer CAN engeg in intetional discrimination for the asserte purpose of avoiding or remedying unintentiona disparate impact"

Now YOU are making things up