If you haven’t heard of professor bainbridge at #UCLALaw, he somehow works at #UCLA.

I’m about to drag him for not understanding how to read a paper he attacks below. It’s unnerving that a professor can’t understand how to read a paper.

But why do we even know his name?

1/ https://twitter.com/prawfbainbridge/status/1297326265679011840
The prof’s kinda a racist POS.

I say kinda. No. He’s just straight up a racist piece of shit. And hey @UCLA: Guess what, he’s back on Twitter!

But where else do we know him from...

2/ https://twitter.com/altonwang/status/1248662619604398080
That’s it! There is ONE Asian person @PrawfBainbridge likes— @davideryu!

No way! The #CD4 candidate getting donations from Barger—the guy who got DeJoy appointed at USPS?

Well, you’ll notice a lot of neocon racists love dave. Because dave, too. But later on that.

3/ https://twitter.com/hayesdavenport/status/1300559742918565888
Let’s get back to dragging stevie, over the study in post 1.

“Correlation is not causation” is a thing sadboys think sounds smart. It’s often used to dismiss studies, outright.

But I read the paper, Stevie.

And guess what? You dismissal with that phrase is facetious.

4/
One:

In said paper, they use control methods common to comparative study.

They control for: GDPPC, population, tourism, urbanization, elderly population, healthcare system conditions, gender equities, and cultural norms.

It’s quite a nice job. But, you didn’t read it.

5/
How do I know?

Because unless stevie has a secret trove of studies in his butt, it looks like they accounted for known factors well, before assessing. The effect holds, repeatedly.

So, stevie: what’s the confounding, ghost variable you’re your counter-hypothesis rests on?

6/
Not only do they control for damned near everything, they provide prior models that anticipate the outcome. Their citations explain the behavioral patterns that gender is proxy for, and why they’d have effects.

It’s only 16 pages—but I guess that’s past page 8, so...

7/
So Two:

Just like Special Relativity didn’t negate the usefulness of Newtonian physics when launching rockets, your critique doesn’t actually change the utility of the finding.

Here’s the thing stevie: causal chains have many points, some of which are corollary to others

8/
Gender, as they’ve shown, is bundled to behavioral expectations that confer measurable differences in leadership styles.

The paper is studying those differences using the proxy of gender—it does not posit that gender, as concept in itself, is causal. You daft, pigheaded man.

9/
If I push a ladder off a building onto you, I didn’t strike you, but you’d be hurt.

You’d say, “You hurt me,” and I’d quip back, “No, the ladder hurt. Your nerves potentiating hurt. Your brain experienced the sense of hurt hurt. My actions were merely correlation.”

10/
Round and round we could go, arguing proximal and distal til the cows came home.

But it’d be goddamned stupid.

In this case: it says nothing to say “correlation not causation.” The causal mechanism is served by the proxy of gender, because behavior is well tied to it.

11/
That’s what makes it a good proxy.

If you don’t like gender and behavior getting so tied up: http://gender.ucla.edu  has some profs who’ll help you dismantle that. I’m fucking game, bro—come join the X-on-your-ID club.

Oh, I bet that made you shiver to think about.

12/
A real academic would take a paper like this and say: “Well, let’s tease out some of these behaviors, and examine them across gender! See if we can explain what to emulate!”

Y’know, contribute.

Instead, flipboy tries to dismiss with “correlation is not causation.”

13/
Why? We know it controls well. We know it explicitly states using a proxy. What’s stevie’s problem?

Well: he didn’t read it, just the headline. He got an emotional reaction, because it implied women might be good at something. And that’s something that gives him a big sad.

14/
Because @PrawfBainbridge is a fatuous reactionary.

He got triggered cuz a paper said women good.

So he got on his phone, didn’t read the paper, & tried to dismiss it with a criticism that’s as vacuous as his blog.

Because like all reactionaries, stevie’s not very bright.

/Fin
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