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Study of N.B.A. Sees Racial Bias in Calling Fouls

nytimes.com — A study suggests that a racial bias found in other parts of American society also exists on the basketball court.

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  • kenvsryu, on 10/12/2007, -9/+11780% of the players are black and it's hard to foul someone if you're sitting on the bench in your warmups.
    • kevinwiz, on 10/12/2007, -19/+9that was probably taken into account
    • gxcdesign, on 10/12/2007, -10/+2Look at the Denver Nuggets...where is the bias?
    • geekorati, on 10/12/2007, -5/+42well, apparently, you can get ejected for laughing and clapping on the bench. Just ask Tim Duncan.
    • skEwb35, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15Stephen Jackson just got ejected last night for clapping.
    • mutatron, on 10/12/2007, -8/+10People need to read the article. It isn't a significant bias when all variables are removed.

      "Across all of these specifications," they write, "we find that black players receive around 0.12-0.20 more fouls per 48 minutes played (an increase of 2 1/2-4 1/2 percent) when the number of white referees officiating a game increases from zero to three."
    • socalrob, on 10/12/2007, -8/+13I was going to say the same thing. I don't want to sound racist but last time I watched a basketball game, of the 10 people on the court, 3 were white guys. Then they switched out some guys and it went down to like 1.

      If it were something like baseball which has a more even racial spread then that would be more relevant. Or heck, compare it to hockey, if it was found more fouls called against black players than white players, that would be a racial singling out.
    • thescimitar, on 10/12/2007, -6/+8One would hope that the study was done in terms of percentage of fouls called per race. Also, like a number of other posters noted; isn't it possible that white players just happen to foul less than black players? It's not a prejudiced referee conspiracy ffs.
    • sfpfc, on 10/12/2007, -7/+5rasheed wallace accounts for increase

      to be fair though, there are a lot of scumbags in the nba ie stephon jackson, carmelo, dennis rodman (yes he retired i know), ron artest

      white people would have more players like this but not many white guys play this sport i don't think professionally
    • PhantomRogue, on 10/12/2007, -4/+17Love how you post the NYTimes article. The people who wrote the "Study" didnt even have access to the complete records. They only could do it by "3 man crews" not individual Refs.

      "The study that is cited in the New York Times article is wrong," president of league and basketball operations Joel Litvin told The Associated Press on Tuesday night. "The fact is there is no evidence of racial bias in foul calls made by NBA officials and that is based on a study conducted by our experts who looked at data that was far more robust and current than the data relied upon by Professor Wolfers.

      From the ESPN Article at http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2857469
    • sfpfc, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2i meant to edit this but i think there are more black players than whites and there is just a few players that should have been banned a long time ago

      dennis rodman got off easy after kicking the guy in the groin
      i believe a 15 game suspension for a brawl whoopee
      latrell sprewell choking incident (i think i hate him the most)
      that white ref who ejected duncan was a loser (duncan i think shouldn't have had the first technical but the second one he provoked) but the ref got his punishment for that one
      i want to put dirk on the list cuz i dont like him (garnett owns him)
    • unitethenations, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3@kenvsryu (#6465259)
      They took into account the player's playing time (i.e black players, who make up a large portion, play ~83% of the time, so they calculuated the fouls also as a percentage of their time on the court).
    • sfpfc, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7if like the one black guy in hockey was a troublemaker and kept getting ejected im sure every report would say most black nhl players are not treated equally as the white players
    • cawpin, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1@sfpfc - The guy that Rodman kicked got off easy, not the other way around. The ***** photographers shouldn't be on the damn court. If I was Rodman I would have sued HIM for interfering with my livelihood.
    • Moly, on 10/12/2007, -5/+17Yeah. Or maybe minority players commit more fouls and are thus called for more fouls.
    • mattinm, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1@socalrob

      Hmmm... last time I checked, the diversity within baseball was at an all time low. Only 8% of MLB players on the opening day rosters were black.
    • sfpfc, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@cawpin

      there is one rule, you never kick a guy in the groin, of course this changes if they do dirty fighting too...or if they are stronger :), every guy i assume has been hit there once and can almost feel the pain when they see another guy hit in the groin. plus the guy was sitting down, i mean i know rodman would be stronger anyway but the photographer was not trying to fight him, its almost as bad as kicking a person while they are already down.
    • luckyllama, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4What really made the article interesting is the fact it stated (in one lonely sentance of a 3-page article) that all-black referee crews called more fouls against white people then black people. That messes with the logic several people have posted about "Blacks just foul more".
    • djlosch, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3the study found that the highest rate of bias was 4.5% more fouls when there were 3 white refs as opposed to 3 black refs. while i'm all about getting rid of latent bias, this is crap. when you look at how many variables they had to consider (like some players specifically coming in to throw fouls), that 4.5% is nothing. even the coaches interviewed didn't have an issue. these number crunchers just need to lay off.

      since 83% of all players are black, maybe the white refs just call fouls slightly more than black refs. if the white refs call fouls 5% more than black refs for a tighter game, the shear number of black players will lead to more black players being fouled. and as a soccer ref for 8 years, there's rarely a call that is (pardon my pun, but) black or white. some refs allow more than others. it's part of the game.

      with such a low correlation (4.5%) in the worst case scenario, i see no need for any alarm.
    • dpcdomino, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2But white players are not in the key as much as black players. Not to stereotype or anything....
    • wonderboy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@mattinm

      You do know there are more races in the world other than white and black, right?
    • BeyondGoodNEvil, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4It's odd that the NAACP attacks football since the coaches aren't black as often, but nobody attacks the NBA where about 80% of the players are black. I'm just sick and tired of the selective use of "racial bias". Here we see fouls are being called more on black players, so there's racial bias... well what about the obvious "racial bias" of 13% of the population dominating 80% of the NBA player positions? Such *****.
    • sicclife, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1Affirmative action?
    • podwich, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@ mattinm

      The fallacy in your statement is that you assume all the non-black players in baseball are Caucasian. You're way off in that assumption.
    • Cerialthriller, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1this reminds me of a racial profiling case that went on in the philadelphia area a few years ago. Black people claimed they got more tickets more often then white people. So they setup those speed radars with cameras, along a few busy highways for a few days, and when they studied that data, it turned out that actually a higher percentage of white speeders recieved tickets then black speeders, for example, like if 50 people were photographed speeding and 35 were black and 15 were white, say 8 white people got tickets and about 15 black people got tickets, its a much lower percentage but higher numbers. they shut up fast.
    • jekylltech, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I call for 'Affirmative Action', blacks make up 12.5% of the population, thus they cannot make up more then 12.5% each team. If they can place blacks into engineering positions where I work (even if lower qualified) then they can place whites in basketball (even if lower qualified). Because affirmative action is all about racial equality right?
    • rasterbator, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"A coming paper by a University of Pennsylvania professor and a Cornell University graduate student says that, during the 13 seasons from 1991 through 2004, white referees called fouls at a greater rate against black players than against white players."

      I agree with you, kenvsryu. When there are 8 black players on the court and two white players on the court at any given time, there will be more fouls called on black players, REGARDLESS of the official's race. How do "scientists" get funding for ***** like this?
  • DreyX, on 10/12/2007, -13/+12You seriously gotta be kidding me... Like Kenvsryu quoted 80% of players in the NBA are black, how can you possibly even make an argument that if a white offical calls a foul on your it's because he is racist? O well, this topic was the only reason I even logged in... Mike James the player who quoted that white officals treated him differently than black officals... you got to be ***** ME! First of all Mike James is known as an AGGRESSIVE player in the NBA... Maybe he'll think twice about making a comment about the refs... it's a hard duty being a ref in the NBA... But the racial idea... WOW :(
    • trer, on 10/12/2007, -2/+18Did you RTFA?

      “If that’s going on, then it’s something that needs to be dealt with,” James said. “But I’ve never seen it.”

      Hardly sounds like the quote of someone who thinks he's being treated differently by white refs...
    • leftnut, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Anyone who watches the NBA will know that the best players rarely get called for fouls. Three examples come to mind: Michael Jordan, Shaq and Karl Malone. They often get away (OK two are retired so *got* away with) with hand checks, bumps, walks and elbows that nobody else on the team got away with.

      This article is crap. Race bating at its worst. Probably sparked by the incident with Tim Duncan at the end of the regular season.
  • Yancie, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6they're all black,

    hockey i might understand
  • orbit1979, on 10/12/2007, -7/+28What a f'n joke. When will the race-bating ever end?
    • 1021, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5yeah, I can't believe a quality institution like Cornell would even partake in something like this... it's disgraceful.
    • biggbrother, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3"I can't believe a quality institution like Cornell would even partake in something like this"

      Then you're too stupid to have beliefs.
  • axpdocbrown, on 10/12/2007, -5/+20...was it ever considered that maybe black players commit more fouls? Or perhaps it's one of those...what do you call them...coincidences.
    • theroyalweman, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4read the article - there was a LOT of research that went into this. i love all the armchair-statisticians that are suddenly coming out of the woodwork:

      "was it ever considered that maybe black players commit more fouls?"

      actually, the study compared how white and black referees call fouls against black players, and it was determined that white referees call fouls on black players at a higher incidence than against whites.

      "To investigate whether such bias has existed in sports, Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price examined data from publicly available box scores. They accounted for factors like the players’ positions, playing time and All-Star status; each group’s time on the court (black players played 83 percent of minutes, while 68 percent of officials were white); calls at home games and on the road; and other relevant data."

      even this guy ( http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/2007/05/02/racial-bias-in-nba-refereeing/ ) thinks the study was spot on. "I’ve read through the paper and could not find any mistakes. It appears to be carefully done."
    • unrandom, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2@theroyalweman

      Armchair statisticians is right... I've taken more than one statistics course at university, and while it isn't my area of expertise I at least have some concept of how to go about a study like this. It says, right in the article, that a multitude of variables were accounted for -- that they've considered that there are more black than white players, among a number of other factors *not even mentioned* by the armchair statisticians around here.

      The study was also considered sound by independent experts. So the question is -- do you trust the NBA commissioner, who has an interest in projecting a lack of racial bias in the NBA, or independent experts who actually know a thing or two about statistics?
    • shawnanigans, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I think it also has to do with where the players came from. The black players are usually American and played street ball (not saying thats how they learned but the chances are petty high they played it). The white players are usually Europeans, who often focus on fundamentals and don't do as many street moves, such as dunking. I watched the Olympics and it really showed this. The Greek team played solid fundamentals but never dunked, the Americans went for the dunks far too often and they got bronze.
    • gpd209, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I support theroyalweman and urandom. Armchair statisticians is right. Race-baiting? C'mon. There is no reason to believe the researchers who conducted this study were steering it toward any particular result. Most likely they undertook this little experiment simply because they found a large repository of numerical data, just waiting to be crunched.
  • jessdub99, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4When is everyone gonna realize that "When all else fails, play the race card".
  • mutatron, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2This was on reddit earlier. My response:

    Oh please, here's the bottom line:

    "Across all of these specifications," they write, "we find that black players receive around 0.12-0.20 more fouls per 48 minutes played (an increase of 2 1/2-4 1/2 percent) when the number of white referees officiating a game increases from zero to three."

    That's usually not even one foul per game for an entire team. That's really irresponsible reporting, especially the headline, which should have modified "Racial Bias" with "Very Slight".
    • theroyalweman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1directly from the article:

      'They went on to claim that the different rates at which fouls are called “is large enough that the probability of a team winning is noticeably affected by the racial composition of the refereeing crew assigned to the game.”'

      holy ***** - how about three paragraphs later from your quote?

      "Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price claim that these changes are enough to affect game outcomes. Their results suggested that for each additional black starter a team had, relative to its opponent, a team’s chance of winning would decline from a theoretical 50 percent to 49 percent and so on, a concept mirrored by the game evidence: the team with the greater share of playing time by black players during those 13 years won 48.6 percent of games — a difference of about two victories in an 82-game season."
    • DephexTwin, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2If that's true, then I'd love to see someone put an all-white squad out on the floor for the entire game all season and see how well those chumps do.
    • mutatron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@theroyalweman,

      I dugg you up even though others dugg you down, but I still find the paragraph you cited to be disingenuous. The numbers it cites are fabricated from the data. They are theoretical maxima making assumptions that don't necessarily reflect real world situations.

      Besides, my complaint wasn't about the findings themselves, but about the characterization and subsequent misunderstanding of the findings. You see it right here, people are assuming that there is a significant difference. In the minds of those who only read the headlines or hear about this article from friends, they're going to be assuming the difference is more like 10% or 20%. Yeah, that's an assumption right there, but you know it's the truth!
  • antoniojvr, on 10/12/2007, -12/+11Maybe the black players are more violent...
  • biggbrother, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2The NBA's response was very convincing. "This is not true. We have done our own study with our own data and found that they are wrong! We won't show you the data, results, or methodology, but we have proven without a doubt that they are wrong."

    How could these other guys possibly think that their evidence, based on data, methodology and results that they will share with anyone, has any value?
    • Jwoey, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2The NBA cant release their information, as it would go against the confidentiality clause in the referee's contracts.
    • biggbrother, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3So what? In the academic world, statements are based on evidence. You don't see refutations of published papers based on statements of the form, "I heard a rumor from a guy who knows someone in a position to know that this study is wrong."

      You show your evidence, prove the other guy was wrong, or shut up. The NBA's claims mean nothing. Sounds like "if you saw the documents I've seen, you'd agree with going to war".
    • Jwoey, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3The NBA doesn't care if their claim means anything. They'd like to supress the idea that referees are racist, but this is basically a nonstory. Im surprised they commented at all. The study this assistant professor performed hasnt been shown to be validated, and even if it was it shows a very slight variation. It comes from someone with an agenda and can really be ignored.

      Also, its just like when coaches or players complain about the foul counts at the end of games.

      "They took 42 foul shots and we only took 24, you can't say they weren't calling it one-sided" Of course I can, if you foul more, you get called for more fouls. You think only the games in which each team takes the same # of free throws that the game was well called?
  • blog4charity, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3That's BS.

    Majority of players are African-American. What do you expect?
  • smurfpuppy, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0I can't wait til they do the same study for Hockey... Think of the implications. The Stanley Cup may cease to exist due to Racists Ref's. We have made comments at hockey games that imply that as well, (simple things like, "hey ref, bend over and use your good eye", or "I got a rope, I got a tree, all I need is a refereee". ) Do you realize during the whole Hockey playoffs not once have they called a penalty on a black player..... Wow, it's just horrible.....

  • synthox, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Can anyone POSSIBLY even take this article seriously.
  • grunk, on 10/12/2007, -8/+4nappy-headed pimps.
  • anasazi, on 10/12/2007, -3/+20keeping the black man down with their multi-million dollar contracts
  • kushed, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2Come on everyone knows Tim Dunken got double technical because he is black and he laughing at the white coach, or was it cause he was... wait, why da ***** DID he get gicked off that game?
  • Jwoey, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3This has been strongly criticized by the NBA as false and having an agenda. The survey did not take into consideration which official on the court made the foul call, only which 3 officials were on the court at the same time.

    ""The study that is cited in the New York Times article is wrong," president of league and basketball operations Joel Litvin told The Associated Press on Tuesday night. "The fact is there is no evidence of racial bias in foul calls made by NBA officials and that is based on a study conducted by our experts who looked at data that was far more robust and current than the data relied upon by Professor Wolfers." "The NBA has an observer at each game and closely monitors its officials, who are required to file reports after each game they work and are expected to be able to explain each potentially controversial call they have made."- ESPN's article of the study.

    This is a study performed by an assistant professor with an agenda. The claims are bogus.
    • biggbrother, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2"This is a study performed by an assistant professor with an agenda. The claims are bogus."

      What the ***** are you talking about? That's a rather serious (libelous?) claim from someone who has no way to back it up.
    • Spuy767, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2You know that minorities can say anything with no fear of retribution. If your caucasian tho, watch your ass.
    • gyrfalcon, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1@biggbrother "That's a rather serious (libelous?) claim from someone who has no way to back it up."

      I think you're a pansy @ss retard... go back that up forest gump.
    • hayate, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0What happened to good old fashion lynching?
  • djsputnik, on 10/12/2007, -0/+194 1/2 percent variation. sounds like a standard statistical deviation, not an issue of race.
    • biggbrother, on 10/12/2007, -10/+2You really don't know much about statistics, do you? How the ***** can you have any idea what is a "standard statistical deviation"?
    • mutatron, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3And it's a maximum of 0.2 more fouls per player for each 48 minutes of play. Over a whole game that comes to less than one extra foul for the entire team.
  • SloppyJoe, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18Quick! Get Sharpton! A great injustice is being done!
  • davesbrain, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1This just in, the whole world is racist.
  • markforbrains, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Even though they are studying the rate of foul calls this study is irrelevant based on the fact that they aren't specifying whether or not the fouls were questionable calls. It's impossible to come up with a conclusive study on the subject because defining the legitimacy of one foul to the next on a broad scale is impossible.
  • grunk, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15I've noticed a lack of short, fat white guys playing in the NBA. Must be racism.
    • gyrfalcon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7If you think that's bad, look at how few indians, mexicans and asians there are!
  • mandarin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I see the University of Pennsylvania actually considers watching basketball games as 'doing research' these days....
  • lunasc, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1you don't have to be a grad student to know that during the period that the study was done the proportion of african american players to white player grew exponentially. At anytime on the court the ratio of black players to white players is probably 9:1 or 8:2 --so NO DUH if there are more black players then their gonna call more fouls on them ----what a stupid study.
    • mutatron, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Do you have to be a grad student to read the article?
    • codered1322, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1They didn't just add up the fouls called against all blacks and compare it to the fouls called against all whites. They accounted for the different percentages. No duh.
  • formergthing, on 10/12/2007, -5/+0Maybe their is a racial bias in committing fouls - ever think of THAT?!
  • underbiteman, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4You are missing the point. They are not saying black players are getting more fouls called on them. They are saying depending on the racial make up of the refs, there is a statistically significant difference in the way a game is called.
  • Newlow, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Everyone on the court is black as it is.

    How about the white refs are just 3% more strict in determining fouls than the black refs?
    • mutatron, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2But they also found that black refs called more fouls on white players. But the maximum hit is only about 0.8 extra fouls per game, so it isn't really significant no matter how you look at it.
    • theroyalweman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0@mutatron

      actually, it is significant:

      "'They went on to claim that the different rates at which fouls are called “is large enough that the probability of a team winning is noticeably affected by the racial composition of the refereeing crew assigned to the game.”'

      "Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price claim that these changes are enough to affect game outcomes. Their results suggested that for each additional black starter a team had, relative to its opponent, a team’s chance of winning would decline from a theoretical 50 percent to 49 percent and so on, a concept mirrored by the game evidence: the team with the greater share of playing time by black players during those 13 years won 48.6 percent of games — a difference of about two victories in an 82-game season."
  • endustry, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Now the producers of Law & Order will have an excuse to write an episode about a nonsensically racist white referee. WHOOPEE!
    • Spuy767, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I thought I was the only one who noticed that they fired all the writers and just copy news stories.
  • uptown, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Clearly Don Imus should be punished for this!
  • ultrastooge, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0 Those poor poor athletes have to put up with so much discrimination. Let's talk more about sports, American Idol, or who Smith's baby daddy is instead of concentrating our discussion on getting the ***** out of the Middle East, and getting the fascists out of government. America is a sad sad place as of lately.
  • DarthAsh, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Seriously, in today’s age the racism roles seem to have been reversed. Any small action a white-guy takes on a black-guy is considered racist, whether the white-guy was right or not doesn’t even matter. Maybe the black guys are the ones who being racist; I mean the white-guys are a race too, and discriminating against them is Racism.
    • jcm267, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I hate the term "reverse racism". Reverse racism is not being racist... but what you are saying about society's double standards is correct IMO. I think eventually it will go away, but given the treatment Bill Cosby has gotten for trying to do something about it I don't think it'll go away any time soon.
  • jcm267, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I don't think it's intentional, I actually saw on one of those "20/20" type programs recently a study done about racial bias. Black people tend to trust people who look like them over others, same goes for whites. It's part of evolution... go back 5,000 years and imagine you're a member of a black tribe living in Africa. What would you do if you saw a white guy? I wouldn't be welcoming him with open arms. It's a tribal mentality that did humans a lot of good while we were evolving into what we are now.

    The best we can do is acknowledge that it exists, try to do our best not to intentionally do it, and call out people like Michael Richards when we see it.
  • grunk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Spike Lee is going to make a movie about this: "White Men Can't Ref"
  • qasabah, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3This report, no matter how stringent, runs into one of the most fundamental problems of trying to make statements through quantifying behaviour.

    Complex, multidimensional behaviour is almost impossible to pin down scientifically. There are so many variables affecting the data that this perceived "discrepancy" is nonsensical.

    Numbers of players is insignificant but what is significant is the position of the players relative to the fouls called, place where the player grew up playing ball, star power of the player (as mentioned previously) type of day the officials had, time on the season, proximity of a game to a mandate from the NBA HQ about calling certain fouls.

    Basically it s a total crap-shoot how this turned out.

    Irresponsible "reporting".
  • kday, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Eh, your title is lame. I like mine better.
    http://www.digg.com/basketball/NBA_Academic_Study_Shows_That_Black_Players_Are_More_Likely_to_Foul

    :P
  • DivisibleByZero, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"white referees called fouls at a greater rate against black players than against white players."

    Fatal flaw in such studies: The rate of penalization means nothing without corresponding data showing whether or not any race actually *commits* more fouls.
  • grunk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Are these black-on-white fouls or black-on-black fouls? That should factor in here somewhere.
  • redled, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0The majority of comments here are missing key pointS. It's been said many times in the comments but here it is in bold:

    THE STUDY TOOK INTO ACCOUNT THE FACT THAT THERE ARE MORE BLACK THAN WHITE PLAYERS

    THE STUDY FOUND THAT THE NUMBER OF FOULS CALLED ON BLACK PLAYERS INCREASED WHEN THE NUMBER OF WHITE REFEREES IN THE GAME INCREASED.

    I can't say if the results are valid or not, but don't assume that they just compared the total number of fouls in last night's game without reading the article.
    • threemagic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1But given a set of players there is a small percentage of those players that will be prone to foul...

      since it's a percentage the overall amount of players that commit more fouls than average will be more when a race has a greater percentage

      therefore there will be more fouls with the race with the bigger percentage

      now if they found that the overall foul rate is lower with one race or another than this happened. I would agree with it...
  • geronimo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Another factor - nationality.

    I would like to see those figures against nationality. We are told that American-style basketball is more aggressive so you can expect more fouls. Most of the American players are black while a good portion of the foreign players are white, so you would expect more white / foreign players to have fewer fouls called on them. Simply comparing the foul rates for foreign vs american players, regardless of race, would confirm/refute this.
  • eliotmat, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1buried.
  • UrbanVoyeur, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Interesting. Too bad they could not include flagrancy in the analysis - is a ref team of a given racial mix more or less likely to call a flagrant/obvious foul against a player based on race?
  • minimaximus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2In related news, a study found that, on average, black players get paid twice as much as white players...

    Seriously, what's wrong with these researchers. A racially-biased researcher can start with any hypothesis she wants, like "Is there a bias against choosing white players in the NBA?", I think the answer would be obvious, but I don't see anyone conducting such 'studies'. Stupid.
  • geronimo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"
    Asked if he had ever suspected any racial bias among officials before reading the study, Mr. Cuban said, “No comment.”
    "

    More passive aggressive blaming. Why am I not surprised that when it comes to blaming Cuban's name pops up, he cannot resist an opportunity to blame refs.
  • Lister169, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Too much of this study appears to be based on the researchers' assumptions, i.e. lumping players together as "the same type" without considering a player's personality or classifying all players as either white or black by looking at pictures. How presumptious to assume all referees will classify them the same way.
    Is Jason Kidd white or black? I don't know and I don't care but apparently Wolfers and Price do.
    Maybe this study shows that black refs are less likely to make a call against a black player.
    Did they take into account the possibility of a ref's personal bias against certain players due to a clash of personalities that has nothing to do with race? I don't see how since a ref would never admit to such a thing.
    What about female refs? Was the gender bias considered?
    The difference could also be attributed to the players. Maybe players subconciously have a different approach to the game based on the racial make-up of the officiating crew.
    Or maybe it's just another case of a researcher's bias subconciously manipulating results to achieve the exact result they had hoped to show.
    You can't create valid statistics based on your assumptions of what another person is thinking.
    • geronimo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Maybe this study shows that black refs are less likely to make a call against a black player."

      that is a great point, I couldn't agree with your other points but this would explain their findings. I am not sure if these researchers are being true to science vs true to being PC, if they were honest they would acknowledge this explanation for the results. Let's say that a group of black refs calls 5 fouls against white players, 5 calls against black players, not counting 5 fouls committed by black players due to bias. Let's say the group of white refs calls 5 fouls against white players and 10 fouls against black players, judging with no bias(assumption). Then the black refs would be racist in this case. And it could go the other way, with white refs being racist. Someone is being racist here, either the white refs or black refs.
  • richalot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Breaking: Study of NHL Referees Sees Racial Bias in Calling Penalties
  • uberfu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1WTF Ever !!!
  • BowWowWow, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Oh yeah, uh-huh. Like any sane rational person is supposed to take this "study" seriously. What a joke. As the old saw goes: "Liars use numbers, numbers don't lie."
  • cljordan1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1OMG! O heard today that fat people eat more than thin people!
  • blueboodah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It is just a somewhat more interesting example of unconscious bias. Similar to talk shows that have had their 'hot' interns made up to look ugly to demonstrate how people treat the 'hotties' better than the 'uggos'. I guess I thought the point of the article is that this is not racism.

    We will hear more about this when the paper is peer reviewed. One would think that scientists may do a better job reviewing the assumptions and methodology then Diggers.
  • caplist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It's about time someone looked into this issue. These poor men have been persecuted long enough. I'll even go out on a limb and wager that the white players are paid more, have bigger houses, more cars, better attorneys, publicists, nutritionists, and trainers than their black coworkers.
    If you actually want an issue to look into how about the amount of money universities make off the free labor of student athletes.
  • NoLeafClover, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Yeah...umm, I'm sure this is true and everything but...tell that to Yao Ming who pretty much fouled out or came close to it for the first 3 years of his career. I smell Asian bias. No love for the big fella. And how man Matt Harperings and Scott Pollards, Greg Ostertags and Chris Dudleys does there need to be to realize this is *****? I mean those guys existed to come on the court, foul Shaq 6 times, then sit back down. WTF?

    In related news, black people are arrested in Harlem at a higher rate than whites!!!! And in Scandinavia, whites are arrested 89.43% more than blacks. Global racial conspiracy!
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