Police Shootings & Racial Bias

The fundamental assumption underlying the protests and riots that followed the death of George Floyd is that racism in police departments across the US is responsible for the fact that a disproportionate number of Black males are shot by the police.  I say “death” and not “murder” not because I have any doubts about the facts because I suspect that the constant use of the latter term, especially by such persons as the Minneapolis chief of police, may make it harder for a court to do justice in this case. 

My purpose here is to question that assumption.  About twice as many White persons are shot and killed by police officers as Black persons, according to the Washington Post database.  That is obviously not a very useful statistic.  Non-Hispanic Whites make up about 76% of the US population; Blacks make up a little over 13%.  The WaPo helpfully explains that Black Americans “are killed by police at more than twice the rate of white Americans”.

A very good and recent summary of the statistics for fatal officer-involved shootings (FOIS) can be found in “Risk of being killed by police use of force in the United States by age, race–ethnicity, and sex.”  The authors do not address causation but confine their study to outcomes.  Here is a fascinating chart of FOIS restricted to males. 

The chart measures deaths by police per 100,000, controlling for population share, and tracks the numbers by age.  Unsurprisingly, the fatality rate rises dramatically at the teen years and drops steadily after 30 for all the age groups.  The most important fact is that the hump for Black males is much steeper than for any other defined group, and much lower than for White males. 

Does this chart point to a racial bias in FOIS nationally?  There is one anomaly that doesn’t support that explanation.  Asian Americans are proportionately less likely than Whites to be killed by police.  If the difference between the White and Black curves is evidence of racial bias against the latter, wouldn’t the low incidence for Asian Americans be evidence for a pro-Asian bias on the part of police forces across the country?  That hardly seems plausible. 

A more significant problem is that the racial bias explanation relies on a generally silent and implausible assumption: that, in the absence of racial bias, the FOIS stats for each demographic group would be perfectly proportional to its share of the total population.  That, in turn, assumes that all the demographic groups are exactly the same for all relevant characteristics.  That is also implausible. 

Another chart leads us in the right direction. 

This is about as robust a difference as one ever sees in social science.  Males are far more likely than females to be killed by police for all groups measured here.  This not, let me go out on a limb, gender bias on the part of the police.  It is a consequence of the fact that men are more likely than women to commit the violent crimes that might bring them into contact with the police and far more likely to escalate once they are exposed to the police.  Here is a bit from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (2011) tracking stats between 1980 and 2008. 

Males represented 77% of homicide victims and nearly 90% of off enders. Th e victimization rate for males (11.6 per 100,000) was 3 times higher than the rate for females (3.4 per 100,000). The offending rate for males (15.1 per 100,000) was almost 9 times higher than the rate for females (1.7 per 100,000).

Is there a connection for the Black/White differential FOIS rates and a difference in rates of violent crime?  Again from the BJS:

Blacks were disproportionately represented as both homicide victims and offenders. The victimization rate for blacks (27.8 per 100,000) was 6 times higher than the rate for whites (4.5 per 100,000). The offending rate for blacks (34.4 per 100,000) was almost 8 times higher than the rate for whites (4.5 per 100,000).

Two recent papers examine the relationship between police shootings and criminal activity among Blacks and Whites: here and here.  Here is a bit from one of them:

We first reproduce the well-known finding that Blacks are more likely to be fatally shot than Whites given population proportions… the odds were 2.5 times higher for Blacks to be killed by police compared to Whites given their population proportions.

However:

When fatal shooting data are benchmarked against the number of murder/nonnegligent manslaughter reports and arrests, the odds ratio obtained when benchmarking against population proportions flips completely. The odds were 2.7 times higher for Whites to be killed by police gunfire relative to Blacks given each group’s SRS homicide reports, 2.6 times higher for Whites given each group’s SRS homicide arrests, 2.9 times higher for Whites given each group’s NIBRS homicide reports, 3.9 times higher for Whites given each group’s NIBRS homicide arrests, and 2.5 times higher for Whites given each group’s CDC death by assault data.

In other words, given rates of homicide reports and arrests, across three databases, Whites were more likely to be shot by police than Blacks. 

The fundamental assumption underlying the current wave of civil unrest is false.  This might be an important fact.  One would hope that a responsible press would report it.  One should not expect that it will be mentioned by any major news outlet. 

Science & Politics

It is generally assumed that religion is a cause of political conflict.  That assumption is wrong.  Politics is the cause of political conflict.  Religious controversies drive politically controversies only when theological doctrine and religious practices become part of the self-identification of some political faction and/or, more importantly, when some faction comes to regard certain doctrines or practices as definitive of its enemies.  

Much the same thing is true when we consider the politicization of science.  The political left in the United States often accuses the right of being “anti-science” and the left is right, if you mean that conservative political views often determine what scientific evidence a conservative is willing to accept.  However, according to Erik C. Nisbet and R. Kelly Garrett.  They conducted a recent study of how political bias leads conservatives and liberals to distrust science.  The study is published in the ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science and they summarize their findings in The New Republic. 

Nisbet and Garrett found that “Conservatives are no more biased about science than liberals are,” to cite the title of the TNR piece.  The authors consider two explanations for the ideological divide between conservatives and liberals over scientific issues. 

The first explanation assumes that conservatives are inherently anti-science as they tend to be more dogmatic and close-minded compared to liberals. They are therefore more “motivated” to reject scientific information that clashes with their world view and distrust its sources (in other words, scientists).

In contrast, the second thesis argues that though there are some nuanced psychological differences between liberals and conservatives, it would be a mistake to overstate them. Liberals are viewed as no less likely to respond to scientific information in biased manner than conservatives.

For instance, liberals and conservatives are equally likely to reject fact-checking messages that contradict misperceptions or believe in false political rumors about candidates they oppose.

I am inclined to accept the second explanation, whether because of brain design or because it happens to confirm my thesis, stated above.  

Unsurprisingly, we found that conservatives who read statements about climate or evolution had a stronger negative emotional experience and reported greater motivated resistance to the information as compared to liberals who read the same statements and other conservatives who read statements about geology or astronomy.

This in turn lead these conservatives to report significantly lower trust in the scientific community as compared to liberals who read the same statement or conservatives who read statements about ideologically neutral science.

Significantly, we found a similar pattern amongst liberals who read statements about nuclear power or fracking. And like conservatives who read statements about climate change or evolution, they expressed significantly lower levels of trust in the scientific community as compared to liberals who read the ideologically-neutral statements.

Biased attitudes toward scientific information and trust in the scientific community were evident among liberals and conservatives alike, and these biases varied depending on the science topic being considered.

As is the case for religious ideas, some scientific ideas are politically significant and some are not.  The former are those around which genuine political factions coalesce. 

There is probably no way to remedy this.  Religious wars in the West were ended not so much by deciding that religion was politically irrelevant as by a collective decision that politics was religiously irrelevant.  We discovered that we are not such fools as to believe that God needs us to save Him.  It will be harder to work that same strategy for science and politics.  Evolution is the right theory or not, regardless of whether a school board in Texas likes it.  Deciding what to do about climate change requires a lot of judgment calls on scientific questions and those calls must be made in political, not scholarly forums. 

Roger White on Origin of Life Explanations 2

Roger White distinguishes three types of phenomena, illustrated by “pebble patterns.” 

The Chancy Explanation: Pebbles scattered randomly on a sidewalk require no other explanation than chance. 

Unintentional Biasing: Pebbles arranged in order of diminishing size as they a near the shoreline. 

Intentional Biasing: Pebbles arranged in the shape of a fish (without legs). 

I altered the last one in a way that I hope will be amusing.  According to White, all but a few of those who write with expertise on the problem of the origin of life believe this phenomenon must fall into the second category.  Some natural forces must bias the Kosmos toward the emergence of life, just as the tides bias the pebbles toward a coherent pattern. 

The third explanation is ruled out as unscientific.  The first is ruled out because it is wildly implausible that the conditions upon which the emergence of self-replicators depends should have come about, in the time allotted, merely by chance.  Unintentional biasing must therefore be true by default. 

White argues that the reason that the origin of life is not at all like the unintentional biasing of pebbles by size on the beach. 

The numerous steps required for life to exist are quite unlike this. It is not a matter of the same event-type or property being instantiated many times without exception. The conditions required for the emergence of life have little at all in common.

Adding a bit to what White says, the emergence of life on earth seems to have been a single event (however long it took), not a repeated pattern. 

Why then are most scientists so reluctant to allow too much chance into their accounts of life’s emergence? I will offer a speculative diagnosis. The conviction that life couldn’t have arisen by chance is typically a gut reaction to the data, not a conclusion arrived at on the basis of a theory about when it is plausible to ascribe something to the work of chance.

What makes this event seem so implausible to so many is that it seems to suggest unmistakable evidence of design. 

Again adding to White, I would contrast the origin of life problem with the problem that Darwin addressed.  Why do so many different organisms exist, all of them more or less well adapted to their respective ecological niches?  That is a pattern that is persistent historically and geographically.  Natural selection then can be seen as the unintentional biasing mechanism analogous to the motion of water acting on the pebbles. 

Interestingly, unintentional biasing would be a much more likely explanation for the origin of self-replicators if Aristotle had been right about spontaneous generation.  If the emergence of living organisms from non-living matter under predictable conditions were a persistent feature of nature, as Aristotle, for understandable reasons, believed that it was, then unintentional biasing toward the emergence of life would be very likely indeed.  Of course, this is not the case. 

White makes a strong case that unintentional biasing in nature is not a well-grounded explanation for the origin of life.  That leaves chance and intentional (or intelligent) design.  I would suggest, however, that his dismissal of the gut reactions of so many scientists is premature.  To use one of his analogies, if a tornado picked up a pile of spare parts and assembled it into a working 747 airliner, no one would interpret this was the work of mere chance.  If even the simplest molecular self-replicators as well-designed as the airplane (which may be the case) and unintentional biasing is not a plausible interpretation of the former, then…

I am not making an argument for intelligent design here.  I am not particularly interested in it only because I don’t know what to do with it when thinking philosophically and scientifically about the phenomenon of life.  I do think that White’s argument could be turned almost as easily (perhaps just as easily) into an argument for intelligent design as for the origin of life by chance.  That fact may tell us something about the phenomenon.  If so, it would be unscientific to ignore it.  

The Origin of Life, Chance, and a Biased Kosmos

Tonight I read “Does Origins of Life Research Rest on a Mistake?” by Roger White (NOUS 41:3 (2007) 453–477).  Nagel refers to this paper and White refers back to conversations with Nagel.  It is a very interesting read. 

White challenges a basic assumption that is apparently shared by almost all of those scientists who are trying to explain the origin of life.  Darwinian theory does very well at explaining the emergence of more complex and varied forms of life from simpler forms.  It depends, however, on the existence of self-replicating molecules that can come under the influence of natural selection.  What can explain the origin of the self-replicators? 

White presents the alternatives with an elegant metaphor: the three pebble patterns. 

Pebble Pattern 1: Pebbles are scattered in a disorderly fashion as we typically find them on the sidewalk. 

Pebble Pattern 2: At the English seaside, pebbles cover the beach in descending order of size toward the shoreline

Pebble Pattern 3: The pebbles are arranged to form a stick figure with a smile on its face.

Pattern 1 requires no explanation other than chance.  Random forces acting on the initial state (the prior position of the pebbles) produced the current state.  Call this the chance explanation. 

Pattern 2 shows a coherent pattern that does call for an explanation that involves more than chance.  The action of wind and wave select out heavier and lighter pebbles and place them accordingly.  Unlike the previous example, where the resulting state is largely dependent on the initial position of the pebbles, in this example it doesn’t matter much how the pebbles were distributed initially.  The forces at work will move them toward the same arrangement.  White calls this “unintentional biasing”. 

Pattern 3 shows clear evidence of intentional biasing.  Anyone looking at the stick figure will assume that someone intentionally arranged it to make a picture. 

White informs us that almost all of the origin of life theorists reject the chance explanation for the origin of the proto-organic molecules from which all living organisms descended.  The reason is that the emergence of such molecules by chance seems absurdly improbable.

We require one kind of chemical to be present, plus another very different one , and yet another different one , and we require the absence of still other substances. Certain chemical reactions must take place, then others involving different ingredients and producing different outcomes. A wide variety of events that would undermine the whole process must fail to occur. The molecular parts required to make up the replication machinery come in various sizes and structures. And they are not arranged in anything like a simple repetitive pattern but rather each has a very unique position and role to play.

Add to that the fact that the window of time in which this had to take place seems woefully inadequate to those that have looked at the problem with expertise.  To appeal to a familiar metaphor, the emergence of self-replicating organisms in the history of this planet is about as plausible as an army of chimpanzees, randomly striking their keyboard, turning out a copy of Richard III before lunch. 

Neither can the origin of life theorists appeal to intentional biasing (which is to say, intelligent design) as that seems strictly outside the realm of science.  So they have to believe in some form of unintentional biasing.  Something in the nature of the planet (and hence of the Kosmos) was biased in favor of the emergence of life just the tides are biased in favor of a certain arrangement of pebbles. 

White does not indicate whether he accepts the view that the appearance of self-replicating chemicals was as improbable as I put it above.  He just points out that most theorists regard it as so. 

His thesis is that the only reason to reject the chance hypothesis is that life looks like something that was intentionally designed and that fact provides no reason to believe in any natural, unintentional biasing mechanisms.  If I win the lottery despite implausible odds, I may feel as though I had been somehow favored over chance; it makes no case that the lottery is biased, intentionally or otherwise. 

I suspect that White is inclined toward the chance hypothesis.  Those of us who cannot buy it are only lottery winner who cannot believe that in our own good luck.  If the consensus is correct that luck is an implausible explanation, then his reasoning points in the direction of intentional biasing.  That pushes my theometer a couple of clicks in the direction of yes.