One of the best-known scientific studies to posit that implicit bias—the idea that all people are unconsciously racist, sexist, etc.—can be counteracted via strategic effort is taking a well-deserved beating. It now appears that the findings were significantly overstated.
The study, "Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of 'Blind' Auditions on Female Musicians," by Harvard University's Claudia Goldin and Princeton University's Cecilia Rouse, was released in 2000. Its bombshell finding was that blind orchestra auditions—which prevented the choosers from seeing whether each auditioner was male or female—increased female auditioners' odds by 50 percent....
...in an area of research fraught with replicability problems, the orchestra study was supposed to be one of the good ones.
Well, so much for that. In May, Columbia University statistician Andrew Gelman took a deep dive into the study. He described them as "not very impressive at all," and had great difficulty trying to locate the 50 percent statistic within the modest findings.
"You shouldn't be running around making a big deal about point estimates when the standard errors are so large," he wrote. "I don't hold it against the authors—this was 2000, after all, the stone age in our understanding of statistical errors. But from a modern perspective we can see the problem."
...Blind interviews and auditions may be preferable for other reasons. They may even reduce implicit bias in some situations. But as is so often the case, the sweeping claims of social scientists do not seem to survive scrutiny.
It will be interesting to see if diversity coordinators—many of whom incorporated this shoddy scholarship as part of their training seminars—adjust course, though I wouldn't count on it. The entire concept of microaggressions lacks scientific legitimacy, after all, but this hasn't stopped college diversity czars from policing them.