This study was done at my uni, and the legitimacy and rigor of it was questioned and investigated by the university. However, it was ultimately not deemed to be inappropriate. Some interesting info is that the single picture that was shown to the "jury" of a student was handpicked by the author from Facebook, and that the jury consisted of high school students.
They don’t say whether the author knew the grades when selecting the images. They also don’t say whether the jurors knew the grades. As long as they didn’t know I doubt that it had an impact on the study.
You could skew the results if you knew the grades but it wouldn’t be easy.
The reason it was questioned was that some women felt uncomfortable by having their images pulled from social media and rated for attractiveness as part of the study, without having been asked or informed. But ultimately the ethics people decided that it was fine after all.
> Any attractiveness advantage observed during remote classes is more likely due to a productivity-enhancing effect than discrimination.
Suppose the advantage is not that profs descriminate based on beauty but that pretty people get invited to everyone's study group. Wouldn't remote learning lesson that too? Is that the sort of thing they mean by "productivity-enhancing"?
Does it really surprise anyone that being good looking is a positive trait in anything that involves a human relation? This goes both for men and woman
Good-looking female students didn't get straight A's when I was in college, shortly after the ice age. Now, I did know one good-looking female student who got straight A's (briefly my girlfriend), but she was very intelligent and very hard-working.
Or did they? Honestly, I never ever inquired into anyone's grades while in school. But I did know a couple of quite good-looking young women who were still enrolled at the school after four years: any time they sensed trouble ahead in a class, they'd drop while they still could without damaging the report card.
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You could skew the results if you knew the grades but it wouldn’t be easy.
Does your uni routinely question and investigate the rigor of all its studies, or only ones where it doesn't like the findings?
Suppose the advantage is not that profs descriminate based on beauty but that pretty people get invited to everyone's study group. Wouldn't remote learning lesson that too? Is that the sort of thing they mean by "productivity-enhancing"?
Relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36234248
Or did they? Honestly, I never ever inquired into anyone's grades while in school. But I did know a couple of quite good-looking young women who were still enrolled at the school after four years: any time they sensed trouble ahead in a class, they'd drop while they still could without damaging the report card.
> Or did they? Honestly, I never ever inquired into anyone's grades
And this is why we do studies.