I assume DEI persists so stubbornly—at least in corporate spaces—because companies keep convincing themselves (with ample encouragement from consultants conveniently armed with pricey diversity programs) that there's a compelling "business case" for diversity. Yet, the evidence shows, at best, a tepid link between demographic diversity and performance. Worse, these justifications are not only scientifically questionable but also morally fraught—and likely counterproductive (just like the programs themselves, as you so aptly demonstrate with this work).
Heh. So you have no AUTHENTIC scientific, ANTI-RACIST expertise at all. Hey, its (supposedly) a free country (even though it's the granddaddy of all white-supremacist-based nation-states on the globe). I agree --- "That's why used car dealers think they know vax's cause autism." Like you, they believe they know what anti-racism is, and how it's related to science. I have absolutely no idea why you apparently believe that I want to know more about you (to the extent and/or degree that I would search). If you knew anything at all about anti-racism, and how it's related to the scientific method --- we wouldn't even be having this conversation. Indeed, the likes of you have absolutely nothing to teach me --- relative to so-called "instructions" concerning authentic research, as it relates to ANTI-RACISM (nothing at all) --- zilch.
There’s a feature that allows you to listen to the article. Click on the link below. When the article comes up, to listen, click on this symbol ⧁, right above the title.
Maybe. We have been in touch with a reporter at The Times of London. IDK if they *will* run a story on it, but we will see. If they do, and if I remember, I will come back here with the link.
You're in great company; Kendi also called it pseudo-science. Please do post your scientific bona fides here, say, your vita, or google scholar page, so everyone can judge for themselves your own scientific expertise. Else you are just ax-grinding.
As I pointed out, it's NOT necessary to be a scientist to recognize BOGUS, so-called research. I'd also like to see your credentials, or else YOU are just ax-grinding.
Heh. So you have no scientific expertise at all. Hey, its a free country! That's why used car dealers think they know vax's cause autism. Like you, they believe they know science.
You can find out more about me very easily. In fact, if you knew anything at all about how science worked, it would be so easy, I would not have to provide instructions.
Heh. So you have no AUTHENTIC scientific, ANTI-RACIST expertise at all. Hey, its (supposedly) a free country (even though it's the granddaddy of all white-supremacist-based nation-states on the globe). I agree --- "That's why used car dealers think they know vax's cause autism." Like you, they believe they know what anti-racism is, and how it's related to science. I have absolutely no idea why you apparently believe that I want to know more about you (to the extent and/or degree that I would search). If you knew anything at all about anti-racism, and how it's related to the scientific method --- we wouldn't even be having this conversation. Indeed, the likes of you have absolutely nothing to teach me --- relative to so-called "instructions" concerning authentic research, as it relates to ANTI-RACISM (nothing at all) --- zilch.
Dr Jussim, your paper seems to refer to figures that are out of order or aren’t in the paper. Perhaps the Appendix might be from a previous version of the paper?
Thanks for flagging this, I sincerely appreciate it. We've since found several other minor errors or omissions (nothing that changes the overall patterns, but I would have preferred NCRI to have waited to be sure it was more polished, but so be it) and will upload an improved report over the next week or two.
@Lee Lee there has been a lot of ineffective organizational initiatives done over many years.
What’s baffling to me with this research is that people who consider themselves serious researchers use the concepts of two shallow, reductionist, infantilizing, and just bad popular books that met the zeitgeist with perfect storm timing as the core texts for their experimentation.
Were there no other controls or alternate approaches to DEI/Diversity Management/Inclusion that were used?
Or was it simply group identity-focused texts used to confirm a fixed hypothesis?
If the purpose is to make DEI in all of its breadth “wrong” or bad, this study reinforces it.
If it is to open up a heterodox view beyond reacting with the easiest point of make-wrong, it doesn’t occur as scholarship or a “study”to me. It occurs as politics.
For reasons that are not clear to me, Substack is glitching when I try to post my response, so I am going to try to break it up into two replies here. Not sure how many it will be, it seems to be glitching when I paste in more than a paragraph.
Hmmm. First, let's discuss your scientific criticisms, and leave your questions about our motives for the end of this reply.
1. Why did we use Kendi & DiAngelo? Because their ideas/rhetoric are all over DEI trainings and interventions. The topic network found just this as reported early in the paper.
2. As such, we think our findings are potentially vastly more informative and general than had we used the specific trainings used in a specific place. Had we, say, used the DEI materials used by Milwaukee's HR Dept, our studies would be justifiably dismissed as hopelessly trivial and uninformative about anything except Milwaukee's HR dept.
3. Alternative types of DEI. Most DEI training materials are not made publicly available. If you have access to any that are substantially different than the rhetoric used by K&D, please contact me. I would definitely consider using them in followup studies.
4. "Confirming a fixed hypothesis." Well, to test any hypothesis, you need to "fix it" -- that is, make it clear, specific, and empirically testable. So, sure, the hypothesis was fixed. What was not fixed were the results.
5. We definitely suspected that the rhetoric used by K & D, which are all over many DEI materials, demonizes "oppressors." That was the hypothesis. What we did not know was whether that would actually happen. That's why we conducted the studies -- to determine if such demonization would occur. Put differently, the hypothesis was "fixed" but the results were not knowable in advance.
6. It is, fortunately, still a (mostly) free country. Anyone is welcome to believe or state anything they like about our studies, including that they think the studies are crap and that crap studies should not be used to dismantle DEI programs. Actually, these are a set of preliminary studies, and even I do not think they imply any particular course of action other than ... they should inspire additional research on the upsides and downsides of different types of DEI programs/interventions.
However, if one's view is something like "we don't dismantle programs based on crappy research" I say, great! This implies that you think real social programs should be based on sound research. If so, I agree wholeheartedly. The thing is, to be coherent, you would then need to argue for dismantling DEI programs -- but not because of our studies. You would need to argue for dismantling DEI programs because they have been widely implemented based on **no scientific research at all" and, instead, based on the ideology and beliefs of advocates.
Much of what your paper cites is true. Not news but to let you know I read it thoroughly.
The priming in the experiments and conclusions based on it are expected.
And, they are likely to be replicable across larger cohorts if done with the same methods.
I have worked in the field for 20+ years and criticize it perhaps to the extent that one might label me a DEI naysayer.
Kendi and DiAngelo have become popular and equating them with DEI is easy because of their popularity. What they purport isn’t the work I know.
And, unfortunately without considering the tradeoffs associated with driving their ideological fixations forward, many organizations jumped onto this inevitably divisive and ineffective slow motion train wreck. A train wreck planted by many academic institutions, not by people who have been practicing in companies for any period of time.
Have there been people in the practice of advocating on behalf of some group identities for a while?Yes. They can have some success but not in isolation. If the advocacy leads to greater intergroup contact than the status quo, the network effects I’ve observed are largely positive.
As well, there are companies who have been building capabilities that help individuals and their organizations thrive and make their best contributions to the companies’ missions.
The thriving outcomes are not based on one or two shot training interventions. And, few are shared and likely won’t be shared externally. It’s not worth the distraction from the responses.
A lot of Kendi and DiAngelo-like trainings were a reaction to incomplete data about cops disproportionately killing black people . Also untrue, but perception trumps data when the data is loosely disseminated. The assumptions are what get us.
Of course, all have the right to publish anything they’d like. Your research is conformational (thus my using the language of “fixed hypothesis) in that as you cited Kalev and Dobbin, who have repeatedly documented most diversity interventions (especially mandatory training and grievance-based approaches) don’t work for the outcome of representation or promotion of less represented group identities.
Inclusion and diversity skills are not about getting more black or other group identities jobs and promotions. That might be one outcome to create more effective systems in the candidate/employee lifecycle but that isn’t the point—at least not in my work.
If you cannot manage the tensions and complexity of differences and similarities (aka diversity) managing complexity is at best difficult, at best many things will be delayed. And this goes well beyond race and gender as Roosevelt Thomas informed us on in 1991.
Bringing people together to solve complex challenges that require a diversity or expertise that can be accentuated by visible diversity, works well.
The last five years of training-by -fire short-term interventions (like Kendi-DiAngelo content) are suspect and should be stopped.
To make their work representative of the last 50 years of diversity and inclusion programming and impact, is not helpful.
Your thoughtful work and that of others who are questioning (or dunking on) DEI will also benefit from timing, similarly to that of Kendi and DiAngelo just with a different context.
Amri, thank you for your thoughtful comments and constructive criticism. No one should come away believing that our studies addressed all of DEI, let alone other programs for improving quality of work life in orgs, or combating real biases. We are currently in process of revising the report for all sorts of reasons, but I will strongly suggest we add, to the conclusion, a brief statement to the effect that we only studied certain types of social justice rhetoric and is irrelevant to any program that eschews such rhetoric.
I'm sure in this case the demand for peer review was just an excuse, but I would like to know, as a non-academic, what the peer review requirements generally are for this kind of research.
Are there research findings on this topic taking an opposite (woke) viewpoint that have also not undergone peer review yet nevertheless received major media coverage? Would the (now debunked) McKinsey report on diversity ("Diversity Wins") qualify as such a counter-example?
Peer review is ... a mess. See my prior post, "~75% of Psychology Claims are False" which focuses on the scholarly literature. There are no formal standards, just the training-informed semi-subjective standards of individual peer reviewers. A typical published paper is reviewed by 2-4 academics and maybe an editor. Very idiosyncratic. The comments section is behavior weirdly, not done, so will try to reply to this one...
HOWEVER, the report here and at the ncri.io site are intentionally simplified for the lay intelligent reader. There are not a lot of technical details about methods or statistics in the report. That would all be necessary for a peer reviewed submission.
Same here on the weird Substack behavior, one more incoming...
I am also not sure the "peer review" requirement was an excuse. Good journalists should have an appropriate degree of skepticism about many things, and perhaps our paper just did not meet their standards. Remember, this is a reposting of something by Colin Wright. It is a good description of our studies. Whether there was suppression is something I am not at all sure about.
Great and important article, but Colin omits mentioning the source of his assertions about the NYTimes & Bloomberg or whether he verified that information.
As far as I can tell, he appears to be just taking Finkelstein’s word for it.
Those of us who have been paying attention - are aware that (unlike probably hundreds of other supportive, journalistic sources), the NYT and a couple of others definitely declined to publish it (WITH GOOD REASON) >>> There’s a feature that allows you to listen to the article. Click on the link below. When the article comes up, to listen, click on this symbol ⧁, right above the title.
I assume DEI persists so stubbornly—at least in corporate spaces—because companies keep convincing themselves (with ample encouragement from consultants conveniently armed with pricey diversity programs) that there's a compelling "business case" for diversity. Yet, the evidence shows, at best, a tepid link between demographic diversity and performance. Worse, these justifications are not only scientifically questionable but also morally fraught—and likely counterproductive (just like the programs themselves, as you so aptly demonstrate with this work).
Eric Hoffman, "All causes start as a movement, become a business, and then degenerate into a racket". In this case a multi-billion-dollar industry
Heh. So you have no AUTHENTIC scientific, ANTI-RACIST expertise at all. Hey, its (supposedly) a free country (even though it's the granddaddy of all white-supremacist-based nation-states on the globe). I agree --- "That's why used car dealers think they know vax's cause autism." Like you, they believe they know what anti-racism is, and how it's related to science. I have absolutely no idea why you apparently believe that I want to know more about you (to the extent and/or degree that I would search). If you knew anything at all about anti-racism, and how it's related to the scientific method --- we wouldn't even be having this conversation. Indeed, the likes of you have absolutely nothing to teach me --- relative to so-called "instructions" concerning authentic research, as it relates to ANTI-RACISM (nothing at all) --- zilch.
Dear Dr. Jussim & All,
I have something to add:
There’s a feature that allows you to listen to the article. Click on the link below. When the article comes up, to listen, click on this symbol ⧁, right above the title.
https://medium.com/@howardjeagle/research-b551399e889a
When something does not get published in the NYT the whole European msm will ignore it. As news is only true when the NYT writes about it.
Maybe. We have been in touch with a reporter at The Times of London. IDK if they *will* run a story on it, but we will see. If they do, and if I remember, I will come back here with the link.
And we should applaud them for declining to publish pseudo "science."
You're in great company; Kendi also called it pseudo-science. Please do post your scientific bona fides here, say, your vita, or google scholar page, so everyone can judge for themselves your own scientific expertise. Else you are just ax-grinding.
As I pointed out, it's NOT necessary to be a scientist to recognize BOGUS, so-called research. I'd also like to see your credentials, or else YOU are just ax-grinding.
https://medium.com/@howardjeagle
https://www.minorityreporter.net/search?q=Howard+REagle
https://www.minorityreporter.net/search?q=Howard+REagle&type=blogs&page=2
https://www.minorityreporter.net/search?q=Howard+REagle&type=blogs&page=3
https://www.minorityreporter.net/search?q=Howard+REagle&type=blogs&page=4
https://www.minorityreporter.net/search?q=Howard+REagle&type=blogs&page=5
https://www.minorityreporter.net/search?q=Howard+REagle&type=blogs&page=6
Heh. So you have no scientific expertise at all. Hey, its a free country! That's why used car dealers think they know vax's cause autism. Like you, they believe they know science.
You can find out more about me very easily. In fact, if you knew anything at all about how science worked, it would be so easy, I would not have to provide instructions.
Heh. So you have no AUTHENTIC scientific, ANTI-RACIST expertise at all. Hey, its (supposedly) a free country (even though it's the granddaddy of all white-supremacist-based nation-states on the globe). I agree --- "That's why used car dealers think they know vax's cause autism." Like you, they believe they know what anti-racism is, and how it's related to science. I have absolutely no idea why you apparently believe that I want to know more about you (to the extent and/or degree that I would search). If you knew anything at all about anti-racism, and how it's related to the scientific method --- we wouldn't even be having this conversation. Indeed, the likes of you have absolutely nothing to teach me --- relative to so-called "instructions" concerning authentic research, as it relates to ANTI-RACISM (nothing at all) --- zilch.
Dr Jussim, your paper seems to refer to figures that are out of order or aren’t in the paper. Perhaps the Appendix might be from a previous version of the paper?
https://x.com/CuroRelics/status/1861450054525194325
Thanks for flagging this, I sincerely appreciate it. We've since found several other minor errors or omissions (nothing that changes the overall patterns, but I would have preferred NCRI to have waited to be sure it was more polished, but so be it) and will upload an improved report over the next week or two.
@Lee Lee there has been a lot of ineffective organizational initiatives done over many years.
What’s baffling to me with this research is that people who consider themselves serious researchers use the concepts of two shallow, reductionist, infantilizing, and just bad popular books that met the zeitgeist with perfect storm timing as the core texts for their experimentation.
Were there no other controls or alternate approaches to DEI/Diversity Management/Inclusion that were used?
Or was it simply group identity-focused texts used to confirm a fixed hypothesis?
If the purpose is to make DEI in all of its breadth “wrong” or bad, this study reinforces it.
If it is to open up a heterodox view beyond reacting with the easiest point of make-wrong, it doesn’t occur as scholarship or a “study”to me. It occurs as politics.
For reasons that are not clear to me, Substack is glitching when I try to post my response, so I am going to try to break it up into two replies here. Not sure how many it will be, it seems to be glitching when I paste in more than a paragraph.
Hmmm. First, let's discuss your scientific criticisms, and leave your questions about our motives for the end of this reply.
1. Why did we use Kendi & DiAngelo? Because their ideas/rhetoric are all over DEI trainings and interventions. The topic network found just this as reported early in the paper.
2. As such, we think our findings are potentially vastly more informative and general than had we used the specific trainings used in a specific place. Had we, say, used the DEI materials used by Milwaukee's HR Dept, our studies would be justifiably dismissed as hopelessly trivial and uninformative about anything except Milwaukee's HR dept.
3. Alternative types of DEI. Most DEI training materials are not made publicly available. If you have access to any that are substantially different than the rhetoric used by K&D, please contact me. I would definitely consider using them in followup studies.
4. "Confirming a fixed hypothesis." Well, to test any hypothesis, you need to "fix it" -- that is, make it clear, specific, and empirically testable. So, sure, the hypothesis was fixed. What was not fixed were the results.
5. We definitely suspected that the rhetoric used by K & D, which are all over many DEI materials, demonizes "oppressors." That was the hypothesis. What we did not know was whether that would actually happen. That's why we conducted the studies -- to determine if such demonization would occur. Put differently, the hypothesis was "fixed" but the results were not knowable in advance.
6. It is, fortunately, still a (mostly) free country. Anyone is welcome to believe or state anything they like about our studies, including that they think the studies are crap and that crap studies should not be used to dismantle DEI programs. Actually, these are a set of preliminary studies, and even I do not think they imply any particular course of action other than ... they should inspire additional research on the upsides and downsides of different types of DEI programs/interventions.
However, if one's view is something like "we don't dismantle programs based on crappy research" I say, great! This implies that you think real social programs should be based on sound research. If so, I agree wholeheartedly. The thing is, to be coherent, you would then need to argue for dismantling DEI programs -- but not because of our studies. You would need to argue for dismantling DEI programs because they have been widely implemented based on **no scientific research at all" and, instead, based on the ideology and beliefs of advocates.
Much of what your paper cites is true. Not news but to let you know I read it thoroughly.
The priming in the experiments and conclusions based on it are expected.
And, they are likely to be replicable across larger cohorts if done with the same methods.
I have worked in the field for 20+ years and criticize it perhaps to the extent that one might label me a DEI naysayer.
Kendi and DiAngelo have become popular and equating them with DEI is easy because of their popularity. What they purport isn’t the work I know.
And, unfortunately without considering the tradeoffs associated with driving their ideological fixations forward, many organizations jumped onto this inevitably divisive and ineffective slow motion train wreck. A train wreck planted by many academic institutions, not by people who have been practicing in companies for any period of time.
Have there been people in the practice of advocating on behalf of some group identities for a while?Yes. They can have some success but not in isolation. If the advocacy leads to greater intergroup contact than the status quo, the network effects I’ve observed are largely positive.
As well, there are companies who have been building capabilities that help individuals and their organizations thrive and make their best contributions to the companies’ missions.
The thriving outcomes are not based on one or two shot training interventions. And, few are shared and likely won’t be shared externally. It’s not worth the distraction from the responses.
A lot of Kendi and DiAngelo-like trainings were a reaction to incomplete data about cops disproportionately killing black people . Also untrue, but perception trumps data when the data is loosely disseminated. The assumptions are what get us.
Of course, all have the right to publish anything they’d like. Your research is conformational (thus my using the language of “fixed hypothesis) in that as you cited Kalev and Dobbin, who have repeatedly documented most diversity interventions (especially mandatory training and grievance-based approaches) don’t work for the outcome of representation or promotion of less represented group identities.
Inclusion and diversity skills are not about getting more black or other group identities jobs and promotions. That might be one outcome to create more effective systems in the candidate/employee lifecycle but that isn’t the point—at least not in my work.
If you cannot manage the tensions and complexity of differences and similarities (aka diversity) managing complexity is at best difficult, at best many things will be delayed. And this goes well beyond race and gender as Roosevelt Thomas informed us on in 1991.
Bringing people together to solve complex challenges that require a diversity or expertise that can be accentuated by visible diversity, works well.
The last five years of training-by -fire short-term interventions (like Kendi-DiAngelo content) are suspect and should be stopped.
To make their work representative of the last 50 years of diversity and inclusion programming and impact, is not helpful.
Your thoughtful work and that of others who are questioning (or dunking on) DEI will also benefit from timing, similarly to that of Kendi and DiAngelo just with a different context.
Amri, thank you for your thoughtful comments and constructive criticism. No one should come away believing that our studies addressed all of DEI, let alone other programs for improving quality of work life in orgs, or combating real biases. We are currently in process of revising the report for all sorts of reasons, but I will strongly suggest we add, to the conclusion, a brief statement to the effect that we only studied certain types of social justice rhetoric and is irrelevant to any program that eschews such rhetoric.
Indeed, they definitely had "a fixed hypothesis," and indeed, this IS obviously about right wing politricks, rather than authetic scholarship.
I'm sure in this case the demand for peer review was just an excuse, but I would like to know, as a non-academic, what the peer review requirements generally are for this kind of research.
Are there research findings on this topic taking an opposite (woke) viewpoint that have also not undergone peer review yet nevertheless received major media coverage? Would the (now debunked) McKinsey report on diversity ("Diversity Wins") qualify as such a counter-example?
Peer review is ... a mess. See my prior post, "~75% of Psychology Claims are False" which focuses on the scholarly literature. There are no formal standards, just the training-informed semi-subjective standards of individual peer reviewers. A typical published paper is reviewed by 2-4 academics and maybe an editor. Very idiosyncratic. The comments section is behavior weirdly, not done, so will try to reply to this one...
HOWEVER, the report here and at the ncri.io site are intentionally simplified for the lay intelligent reader. There are not a lot of technical details about methods or statistics in the report. That would all be necessary for a peer reviewed submission.
Same here on the weird Substack behavior, one more incoming...
I am also not sure the "peer review" requirement was an excuse. Good journalists should have an appropriate degree of skepticism about many things, and perhaps our paper just did not meet their standards. Remember, this is a reposting of something by Colin Wright. It is a good description of our studies. Whether there was suppression is something I am not at all sure about.
Great and important article, but Colin omits mentioning the source of his assertions about the NYTimes & Bloomberg or whether he verified that information.
As far as I can tell, he appears to be just taking Finkelstein’s word for it.
See my replies above to bws...
I have access to private emails between the study authors and the NYT and Bloomberg. I'll add that to the piece for clarity.
Those of us who have been paying attention - are aware that (unlike probably hundreds of other supportive, journalistic sources), the NYT and a couple of others definitely declined to publish it (WITH GOOD REASON) >>> There’s a feature that allows you to listen to the article. Click on the link below. When the article comes up, to listen, click on this symbol ⧁, right above the title.
https://medium.com/@howardjeagle/research-b551399e889a