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Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Satoshi Kanazawa is Even Wronger Than You Think « Student Activism

Satoshi Kanazawa is Even Wronger Than You Think « Student Activism

Satoshi Kanazawa is Even Wronger Than You Think

When the brouhaha over the Psychology Today “Why Black Women Are Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women” article broke, I wrote a quick blogpost pointing out some of author Satoshi Kanazawa’s most ludicrous, obvious mistakes. But now someone with a bit more competency has gone back to look at the actual data Kanazawa used, and discovered that the problems with his “study” go much deeper.

Much, much deeper.

Basically, Kanazawa completely misrepresented the data. His source material just flatly doesn’t say what he says it says.

Here’s the deal. Kanazawa drew his conclusions on the relative attractiveness of black women from the “Add Health” study, a long-term survey of American adolescents. He claimed that the study showed — proved — that black women were less attractive than women of other races. But that’s not the case.

The attractiveness “data” is itself suspect, for one thing. It consists of the subjective judgments of interviewers