Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Riothamus's avatar

Alas and alack, each clue is wonky by itself and probably not the same area of expertise one is considering as a base for their career.

Expand full comment
Peter Gerdes's avatar

Well I'm not sure how the frequencies break down (more often looked at for good reasons or bad reasons) but I would certainly agree it is a clue to look for and once noticed I think we can usually distinguish the cases prestige is playing a strong role in choice of advisors at for appropriate and inappropriate reasons. So I guess I'm just nitpicking. I find the overall thrust of your post convincing.

I do worry that, as a practical matter (and nothing to do with your suggestions) all the subtlety here (sometimes prestigious advisors are chosen for perfectly normal reasons) provides people a great deal of opportunity to let the very kind of bias you warn about influence their judgement of whether bias exists in that area. Just remarking that it is, of course, a hard thing to do consistently not disagreeing.

Expand full comment
5 more comments...

No posts