"The primary research question tested in the crowdsourced project was whether soccer players with dark skin tone are more likely than light skin toned players to receive red cards from referees."
This seems like a topic where one indeed typically winds-up with a multitude of competing conclusions.
Among other factors for we have:
* Pre-existing beliefs on the part of researchers.
* Lack of sufficient data.
* Difficulty in defining hypothese (is there a skin tone cut-off or should one look for degrees of skin tone and degrees of prejudice, should one look all referees or some referees).
Given this, I'd say it's a mistake to expect just numeric data at the level of complex social interactions to be anything like clear or unambiguous. If studies on topics such as this have value, they have to involve careful arguments concerning data collection, data normalization/massaging, and only then data analysis and conclusions.
But a lot of the context comes from prevalence shoddy studies that expect you can throw data in a bucket and draw conclusions, further facilitated having those conclusions echoed by mainstream media or by the media of one's chosen ideology.
This seems like a topic where one indeed typically winds-up with a multitude of competing conclusions.
Among other factors for we have:
* Pre-existing beliefs on the part of researchers.
* Lack of sufficient data.
* Difficulty in defining hypothese (is there a skin tone cut-off or should one look for degrees of skin tone and degrees of prejudice, should one look all referees or some referees).
Given this, I'd say it's a mistake to expect just numeric data at the level of complex social interactions to be anything like clear or unambiguous. If studies on topics such as this have value, they have to involve careful arguments concerning data collection, data normalization/massaging, and only then data analysis and conclusions.
But a lot of the context comes from prevalence shoddy studies that expect you can throw data in a bucket and draw conclusions, further facilitated having those conclusions echoed by mainstream media or by the media of one's chosen ideology.