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CARROLL: Bias on the brain

By Vincent Carroll, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published November 26, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Researchers have been hunting for proof of widespread bias among Denver police for most of this decade, with inconclusive results. Now they plan to do brain scans of cops - and even test blood and saliva.

Brain scans? Yes, but back to that in a moment. First, it's worth recalling that the formal search for evidence of systematic bigotry began in 2000, with the Biased Policing Task Force. Starting in 2001, officers were required to fill out a "contact card" providing data on every traffic and pedestrian encounter so experts could check for patterns of racial profiling.

Naturally, disparities were found when hundreds of thousands of cards were examined. It would be something of a statistical miracle if that weren't the case. But as a report by two professors at the University of Colorado at Denver acknowledged, "little agreement exists nationally on interpreting these data."

Whites, for example, were more likely than others to be ticketed after traffic stops, while blacks and Hispanics were more likely to be searched. Unfortunately, such differences prove nothing on their own. If they did, then the huge disparity in searches and arrests between men and women would be evidence of police bias, too, when of course it is no such thing.

Comes now the department with another major anti-bias initiative, this one led by Phillip Goss, a social psychologist at UCLA. As described in Tuesday's Rocky, the project sounds mostly like a sensible review of practices with an eye to improving their quality; the retention of female officers has been an issue, for example, which Goff's recommendations have addressed.

But then there is this, according to The Denver Post: "Goff also plans to conduct brain scans of some Denver officers and to sample physiological tissue, such as blood or saliva, to see how they respond to imagery that may detect hidden racial bias."

If you can't find bias in what the cops do, in other words, maybe you can find it in what they think.

First problem: What people think is no one else's business. It's behavior that matters.

Second problem: What if such tests don't actually provide meaningful evidence for bias?

Such scans are among a number of tests used to try to measure unconscious racism. The most popular is the Implicit Association Test, a computer-based exam that you can take online at implicit.harvard.edu/ implicit. (If you're white, chances are high that it will conclude that you "have an automatic preference for whites over blacks.")

Trouble is, as New York Times science writer John Tierney recently pointed out, experts don't agree on what the findings mean.

"In a series of scathing critiques," Tierney writes, "some psychologists have argued that this computerized tool . . . has methodological problems and uses arbitrary classifications of bias. . . . If Barack Obama's victory seemed surprising, these critics say, it's partly because social scientists helped create the false impression that three-quarters of whites are unconsciously biased against blacks."

More important, some researchers believe, the test may be a faulty predictor of actual behavior. "Even though most of the doctors [in one study] registered some anti-black bias, as defined by the researchers," Tierney reported, "on the whole doctors ended up prescribing the clot-busting drugs to blacks just as often as to whites. The doctors scoring low on bias had a pronounced preference for giving the drugs to blacks, while high-scoring doctors had a relatively small preference for giving the drugs to whites - meaning that the more 'biased' doctors actually treated blacks and whites more equally."

Why should we expect brain scans to be any more useful?

Any workplace tests claiming to measure "unconscious racism" are troubling - even if they're voluntary, as in Denver's case - both because of their Orwellian potential and because they undermine reliance on accountability.

We are responsible, after all, for what we can control - our behavior - not for unconscious reactions that remain within our heads.

Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.

Comments

  • November 26, 2008

    6:29 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Mike_In_Hartsel writes:

    Find they can't physically prove bias then invent a test where they can claim bias and scoff at the unbelievers? The same thing they're doing with global warming.

    Everyone has a bias or two or three. It's what they do with them that matters.

  • November 26, 2008

    7:07 a.m.

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    Miseslover writes:

    I give it two years--three tops, before such testing is conducted on the accused to determine the motivation behind their crime. This will allow us to "prove" hate-crimes and then punish them more severely.

  • November 26, 2008

    7:45 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    peterpi writes:

    Over the years, I've heard a distinction that I think is useful: Prejudice or bias is what a person may think about a group other than her/his own. Racism is when s/he acts on it.
    Note, actions are what counts here.
    What a cop thinks is unimportant. How a cop behaves is what matters. If a cop has prejudice towards a group, but her/his demeanor and behavior when meeting with members of that group during her/his duty is by the book and no different than interactions with people of other groups, then what that cop thinks is immaterial.
    Brain scans of cops sounds a little too Big Brother to me. Especially if they're scanning the brain of a cop who hasn't been accused of anything.
    And, saliva tests? What do those prove? That cops can spit?

  • November 26, 2008

    9:13 a.m.

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    RS writes:

    So these advocates of racial bias, inspite of the clear evidence of the recent presidential election, seem to have NO concept of the "right to privacy" outside of attaching reproductive choice for women only to the right?
    It is pretty clear this level of invasion is the ultimate form of abusing the right to privacy we ALL as citizens should enjoy. Thoughts are a greater crime than actions? Hardly, but the elite intelligencia who come up with these theories do have a very negative impact on our society, as the recent vote to continue discrimination by denying the Colorado Civil Rights Iniative proves!

  • November 26, 2008

    12:42 p.m.

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    Cwillyrun1 writes:

    slayer, read the article again. Carroll never tried to make anyone believe people act without thinking. I don't know how you came to that conclusion, unless it's already the prejudiced conclusion you have.

    Carroll is definitely right that this is Orwellian. There is no current proof a brain scan of this type can determine racism. It's all speculative, and science isn't about speculation, it's about trying to determine the facts. This won't do it.

    What's that Tom Cruise movie......... "Minority Report?" This seems to be taking steps to get closer to that, the thought police!

  • November 26, 2008

    1:48 p.m.

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    peterpi writes:

    conservativeslayer, Vincent is saying what should matter is a police officer's actions, not what he or she is thinking.
    Of course, thinking precedes actions. But suppose a cop is assigned to traffic patrol, and the cop thinks, for example, that Jews (I am Jewish) are going to Hell because they refuse to believe Jesus is their Savior. The cop is in an area with a high concentration of Jews, Orthodox Jews (who are noticeable because of their dress), but the cop is only busting actual violators, not busting people for "Driving While Jewish". We may not like the fact the cop has lousy thoughts about Jews, but the cop is enforcing the law fairly.
    Conversely, if the cop is busting people in the above scenario solely because they are Jewish, the cop's own actions will eventually bring the cop down.
    And remember, not liking Jews (or blacks or women or whomever) in and of itself is not a crime.
    So, regardless of what police officers are thinking, they should be judged by their actions. Cops with truly awful attitudes will eventually bring attention upon themselves through their own actions.
    Brain scans can only say this area or that area is active. They can't tell what a person's actual thoughts are. They may tell you that a cop's motor area is busy. They can't tell you that the cop would like to strangle her supervisor for wasting the cop's time with brain scans.

  • November 27, 2008

    8:45 a.m.

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    freethinker07 writes:

    Slayer, thought does matter. However, punishing someone for thought is Orwellian and definitely a violation of civil rights.

    Punishing dissidents for thinking about assassinating Bush would be wrong. Nobody has assassinated him. Therefore no one is guilty.

    Among academics, political opinion is rampant. Accusing them of biased teaching because they have political opinions would be wrong. Punishing them, or "reeducating" them would be a violation of civil rights.

  • November 28, 2008

    10:32 a.m.

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    Miseslover writes:

    Wow, with Conservativeslayer on the job, conservatives have nothing to fear. But then intellectual honesty is not a hallmark of the left--we have mental giants like Al Gore and Michael Moore to prove that.