{"id":2283,"date":"2011-04-01T13:24:43","date_gmt":"2011-04-01T18:24:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/citings\/?p=2283"},"modified":"2011-04-01T13:24:43","modified_gmt":"2011-04-01T18:24:43","slug":"social-science-in-the-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2011\/04\/01\/social-science-in-the-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Science in the Court"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: right\"><a class=\"img-link\" title=\"Creative Commons licensed photo by pixelhut on flickr.com\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/21442750@N07\/5047947369\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4086\/5047947369_ee3a0f8531_m.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Barking Town Hall\" \/><\/a>\n<\/p>\n<p>As the Supreme Court considers a case regarding discrimination at Wal-Mart, a key issue is sociologist William Bielby&#8217;s research.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Plaintiffs in the class-action suit, who claim that Wal-Mart owes billions of dollars to as many as 1.5 million women who they say were unfairly treated on pay and promotions, enlisted the support of William T. Bielby, an academic specializing in \u201csocial framework analysis.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Bielby concluded that two aspects of Wal-Mart&#8217;s culture might be behind pay and other disparities.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>One was a centralized personnel policy. The other was allowing subjective decisions by managers in the field. Together, he said, those factors allowed stereotypes to infect personnel choices, making \u201cdecisions about compensation and promotion vulnerable to gender bias<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Now, a main question in the case is whether Bielby should have been allowed to use general research to draw specific conclusions in the preliminary proceedings.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cBielby made a conclusion that he had no basis to make,\u201d said Laurens Walker, one of two\u00a0University of Virginia\u00a0professors who coined the term for the analysis almost 25 years ago. \u201cHe hasn\u2019t done the research.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But a\u00a0<a title=\"ASA brief\" href=\"http:\/\/www.americanbar.org\/content\/dam\/aba\/publishing\/previewbriefs\/Other_Brief_Updates\/10-277_respondentamcuasaandlsa.authcheckdam.pdf\">brief<\/a> supporting the plaintiffs from the American Sociological Association said that Professor Bielby\u2019s work explaining how Wal-Mart\u2019s policies may have led to discrimination \u201cis well within our discipline\u2019s accepted methods.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/03\/28\/us\/28scotus.html?pagewanted=1&amp;_r=1\">Click here<\/a> for the full story from the <em>New York Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&nbsp;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the Supreme Court considers a case regarding discrimination at Wal-Mart, a key issue is sociologist William Bielby&#8217;s research. Plaintiffs in the class-action suit, who claim that Wal-Mart owes billions of dollars to as many as 1.5 million women who they say were unfairly treated on pay and promotions, enlisted the support of William T. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":337,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/337"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2283"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2290,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2283\/revisions\/2290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}