These summarize my key points about infidelity.

open.substack.com/pub/justinmo...

I solemnly swear to use this as a cudgel against anyone who makes poor criticisms of DEI programming ⚔️🛡️

Summary thread: bsky.app/profile/just...

Shoutout to Dr. Cory Clark, co-editor for this special issue on normative scientific conflicts, who nudged me to write this.

If you’d like to read the full paper, you can find the preprint here:

osf.io/4cp7y

Each author has said there’s something in here that makes them uncomfortable, but they approve of the final product.

In other words, this adversarial collaboration was a success 👍

Based on our review, we make several recommendations to improve the scientific study of DEI programming.

We conclude that everyone (pro- and anti-DEI alike) can do better:

Though, there have been exceptions.

Here in the paper, we review some of these research literatures, and note the strengths and limitations of: affirmative action, Critical Race Theory, and bias reduction interventions (including diversity statements).

For much of DEI’s history, this has not been how programming was evaluated.

Having defined, measurable, and standard outcomes permits better testing of DEI programming because it provides common language and procedure for adjudicating which programs are worthwhile, and why.

To assist in this effort, we offer definitions of D, E, and I that are focused on their intended humanitarian outcome.

We arrived at these by reviewing and critiquing several recent popular perspectives. But, of course, these should be modified as scientific consensus shifts.

This is the meat of the paper:

If you want to test whether something works (or not!), you need to specify how by modeling the network of causal variables presumed to connect independent to dependent variables.

Then, you evaluate competing models.

We contend that these are each reasonable positions but often don’t make contact because DEI is neither standardly defined nor are its outcomes and mechanisms of action standardly evaluated.

We first steel man each side’s arguments.

Pro-DEI argues for the humanistic ideals and effectiveness of such programming.

Anti-DEI argues that such programming is ineffective, costly and, at least in some cases, antithetical to its original aims.

Here’s the abstract.

We believe that people who are pro- and anti-DEI are talking past one another.

To fix this, each side ought to 1) focus on specific DEI programs and 2) test the causal mechanisms by which each program is presumed to achieve its intended outcomes.

So, they concluded that their therapy based on Sexual Configurations Theory helped minority but overempowered majority.

The participants are ignoring signals from the interviewer to stop. This is more grievous than if the flirting or disclosure were unrequited, and then the participant shut it down.

It's using their power in the research participation contract to solicit sexual gratification or opportunity.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

More interesting excerpts below (short 🧵)