This is science?

New Science Says Showing White People How Racist Something is Makes Them More Racist

Um, no.

So, I'm getting not just a little tired of studies that set out to "prove" what the studiers want to prove.  I was going to just ignore this one, until I read this in the comments section:

"Surprisingly, it turns out they only want to harass minorities."

Not surprisingly, this person thinks they know way more than they do know, and it is this kind of "knowledge" that gets under my skin.  In order to educate the less experienced people of the world, I'm going to admit to something that I probably shouldn't: No less than three times in my life, I've been taken and put in a holding cell where I could be kept for up to 24 hours without being charged "for my own protection."  I wasn't charged with a crime, I was only guilty of walking in a neighborhood where, being white, I clearly did not belong.  The police, it turns out, don't only want to harass minorities, so get over that.

If not for that comment, I would have let the whole article slide.  But, I can't now, so here goes.

First, this isn't "science" at all.  The studiers gathered some data and then interpreted it in a way that "proved" something.  It didn't prove much of anything, if it proved anything at all.  And let's get something straight right here, right now: In the vast majority of science, nothing is proven.  The only thing that happens is evidence is found to support hyptheses, which eventually become theories if the hypotheses are tested enough times, and science fails to disprove the hypotheses.  Do we understand the difference between proving something and failing to disprove something?

The claim in the linked article is that seeing more black mug shots lead people to be more inclined to want stronger penalties.  Of course, the subjects in the study, and the person running the study were all white, so the extension from the initial claim is that more black mug shots lead white people to be more racist.

It's actually silly that someone, an "expert," would even do this experiment.  I can say, without a doubt, that what this "proves" is that people feel less empathy towards people who are more different from themselves.  The more obvious the difference, the less empathy, and race is definitely an obvious difference in photographs.  That shouldn't surprise anyone, let alone some supposed psychology "experts."  Worse than that, though, is that us white folk are constantly being told that we can't empathize with "people of color" simply because we are white.  I have to wonder why I haven't seen a study that shows how well people of color empathize with white folks though.  Perhaps it is because no one really wants to prove that it works both ways.  What's the advantage to that?

So, why did they do this study?  As near as I can tell, it isn't to advance science or any other such thing.  This study was done to collect $35 per download, and, perhaps, to try to gain some sort of notoriety in this world where everyone seems to think they deserve to be famous.  As an added bonus, it gives "progressives" more ammo to fuel even more hatred that they claim they hate so much.  Get over it.