Kahan on the Debiasing Effect on White Jurors of Racially-mixed Juries
Dan Kahan is really excited by a 2006 study in which white jurors were placed on both all-white and racially mixed (mock) juries in order to measure the effects this had on the quality of their analysis of a racially-charged case: Coolest debiasing study (I’ve) ever (read).
I submitted a comment (currently in the moderation queue; hopefully it will be live at some point) explaining the parallel I see between an aspect of the study and my own recent interactions with climate change skeptics.
March 4th, 2012 at 8:56 pm
I’m glad I waited for your comment to get through moderation, I was conjuring up all sorts of goofy analogies and similarities you might come up with to compare skeptics to these mock jurors. I was very pleased to be so very wrong, you indeed are a man of your word and seem to be looking at this issue in a new light, or at least looking at your opponents in this issue in a new light
We’re not crazy (well, maybe a little) we don’t have mental illness, aren’t conspiracy nuts, we have our kids vaccinated, and for the most part have a lot of respect for science and scientists. We have simply looked at the same data and procedures used to gather and analyze that data (after invoking FOI in many cases) and have come to a different conclusion. Now we might wrong, you might be wrong, chances are we’re both a little wrong, and a little right.