Bias, Bias Everywhere

Admitting that scientists demonstrate gender bias shouldn't make us forget that other kinds of bias exist, or that people other than scientists exhibit them. In a couple of papers (one, two), Katherine Milkman, Modupe Akinola, and Dolly Chugh have investigated how faculty members responded to email requests from prospective students asking for a meeting. The names of the students were randomly shuffled, and chosen to give some implication that the students were male or female, and also whether they were Caucasian, Black, Hispanic, Indian, or Chinese. And the inquiries most likely to receive positive responses were the ones that came from ... white males! You should pause a minute to collect yourself after hearing this shocking news. Here are the fractions of students who didn't even get a response to their emails, and the fractions who were turned down for a meeting. (Biases aside, can you believe that over half ...