[anthony_d]

The paper is pretty clear in its findings. Why do you feel compelled to dismiss it based on what it doesn’t say?

It adds to our knowledge of a real issue and you seem to be more concerned with not having to adjust your views at all.

[lowbloodsugar]

The claim "National hiring experiments reveal 2:1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track" is not only unproven, it is not even examined. Instead, one small part of that complicated hiring process is examined.

Indeed, one possible explanation is that every woman who participated preferentially selected women because they want more women in the workplace, and every man who participated preferentially selected women because they definitely don't want women, but want to claim that they do, and this study offered them the perfect opportunity. "Look! We're not biased! This survey, which, thank god, didn't require that we actually hire one of these insane harpies, says that I love hiring women! Baaah! Cigars all round!"

An extreme possibility, I concede, and yet one which would explain the findings.

What do you think the paper proved?

[HillRat]

As a potted experiment, it really doesn’t generalize well. Weighting identical candidates except for race/gender/etc. may help uncover obvious forms of discrimination, but doesn’t address the path dependency aspects. For example, in the life sciences, women get less funding and fewer staff when founding research groups, while “elite” male researchers train 10-40% fewer women than other labs; as a result, women tend to have “worse” CVs later in their career due to earlier discrimination.

[esjeon]

If a paper claim 1 + 1 = 3, one gotta introduce 2 to claim that the equation is wrong. Plus, you must not change your view based on single paper, because papers are not always 100% correct. There are always papers that contradict each other.