Adding more color to science the wrong way

Over at ScienceDaily there is a report on a new paper on affirmative action and academia, Understanding the Impact of Affirmative Action Bans in Different Graduate Fields of Study. The paper is gated, but the regression model used really doesn't seem to do much more than confirm intuition. The descriptive details are more interesting and straightforward. Here's the major point: states which banned affirmative action in higher education seem to see a proportionate drop off in "minority" enrollment in many graduate disciplines. I put minority in quotes because if you read through the paper there is the consistent semantic confusion which elides important dynamics at play. The author admits that Asians are not included in the analysis, because they are a varied group. More precisely: "I do not include Asian American/Pacific Islanders students in my definition of 'underrepresented' students of color because the category is too broadly defined to allow ...