NBA study shows slight racial bias in foul calls
Still, Howard Pearl, an attorney and former federal prosecutor who has represented numerous NBA officials and led their union for many years, isn't buying it.
"It is a triumph of statistics over reality," Pearl says. "A [statistical] correlation does not prove causation. Of all the factors that can cause a referee to call a foul, race is a zero factor."
But Wolfers doesn't accuse the league's officials of redneck, malicious racism. He suggests that a more subtle, unconscious bias emerges when a referee must make an instant decision in a high-pressure atmosphere. The academic term is "taste-based discrimination," which is a notion that has been documented in the behavior of police officers, judges and others who must make decisions in racially diverse circumstances.
The effect the study shows is pretty small and if anyone has read the book 'Blink: the Power of Thinking without Thinking', it pretty obvious that Pearl, by claiming that race is a zero factor, is in denial.
