Comment by hackuser | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hackuser | Hacker News Reader

Regardless of the prominence of the source, this is xenophobic stereotyping. They are painting every person in a large, incredibly diverse group (at every school in the United States, and including every foreign student from every country in the world, Canada to Angola to China to Andorra!) with one broad brush. The headline itself is absurd, inflammatory sensationalism.

They have little basis: The statistics are almost meaningless; averages don't represent correlation and massive aggregate numbers tell us nothing about any member of the population. For example, the average wealth of 999 bankrupt people and Bill Gates is $75 million, a number which tells us nothing about anyone in that group.

I never thought I'd see something like this from the WSJ, or say that one of their stories should be removed from HN, but I flagged this one.

(Admittedly there's a chance of something more substantive beyond the headline and pre-paywall paragraph I can read, but I still can't imagine anything can justify that headline or the inept use of statistics to justify it.)

EDIT: Thanks for the suggestions on the web search (which I should have thought of). It turns up this headline too, in the Daily Caller; great job on spreading this story with your excellent journalism, WSJ:

Foreign Students Five Times As Likely To Cheat In College

Click on the "web" link to get past the paywall.

Thanks for the suggestion, but for some reason it didn't work.

> this is xenophobic stereotyping

No it's not. It's just a statistic, what a pathetic rant. If we sampled 1000 people in your Bill Gates example, we can look deeper into the 1000 that make 75 million on average and find Bill Gates - the anomaly - pretty quickly across the population.

Maybe some particular nationalities are pulling that number up it's worth further investigation. It's also not a huge stretch that the students who flew across the world to study in the US have more at stake, and might be more likely to cheat.

At the moment it's just a number and whatever your emotion to that number is it does tell us something.

> At the moment it's just a number

It's not at all just a number. One of the world's leading publications has printed that headline and story; to the great majority of people, the number will be insignificant next to the headline.

> It's also not a huge stretch that the students who flew across the world to study in the US have more at stake, and might be more likely to cheat.

In fact, it's completely speculative to draw that conclusion, to conclude that they are cheating, and to conclude a causal relationship. I challenge you to show us some factual basis for it.

> In fact, it's completely speculative to draw that conclusion

I didn't conclude, I presented 2 possible explanations for the number. Tbh I think you're the one who has made up his mind already on this matter

Not to be overly critical, but there's an irony in you criticising the thoroughness of the methodology considering you only read a paragraph of the article.

That said, this is probably a problem with paywalled articles on HN in general.

I agree with everything you say, but I'm a commenter on Hacker News, not a journalist for one of the world's most influential publications. The standards are a little different.

Not so different as to justify angrily denouncing an article you didn't read. Though at least you were honest about that.

I can't read it (the web workaround didn't work). I can read the headline, which cannot be justified, so I disagree.

EDIT: I'm surprised to see you taking sides in a discussion. I don't think I violated any norms of HN.

I'm not taking a side on college cheating, just advocating for quality in HN discussion. Angry denunciations degrade that quality, and so does reacting primarily to titles. The combination of the two is particularly bad, hence my comment.

Sorry you feel that way, and I fully support your efforts to improve the quality of discussion here - in fact, I'd say be even more active!

I agree the tone is too angry; sorry. In almost all cases I'd agree about such emphasis on a headline - but I think this is an exception. Many people don't read or think past a major publication's very influential headlines (ironic, I know, but certainly many HN and WSJ users read even less than I did).

Foreign Students Seen Cheating More Than Domestic Ones

If they substituted other groups for Foreign, such as certain religions or races, then my response would be broadly supported no matter how the WSJ qualified it in the body. To tar the character of all those students because of their foreign origins is, I still believe, inflammatory, xenophobic, and atrocious.

Anyway, I don't mean to re-litigate the substance of it; I only want to point out that I think this is an exceptional case. Have a great day.

> HN, but I flagged this one.

You should at least read the article. If you can't read the article, don't flag as quickly. Just jump to the next news item.

> this is xenophobic stereotyping.

And I am sure many first hand accounts above of seeing the same pattern are just paid shills of Kochs brothers or hidden racist Trump supporters hiding amongst the HN crowd ;-)

> They are painting every person in a large, incredibly diverse group

Yeah the foreign student group, especially in CS/CE area is not really that diverse and doesn't even come close to representing proportionally every country in the world.

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