When good intentions aren't supported by social science evidence: diversity research and policy

By Alice H. Eagly, Northwestern University

You’d be forgiven for assuming a quick and sure way to multiply profits and amplify organizational success is to increase the gender and racial diversity of any group. According to claims in the mainstream media, the effects of gender and racial diversity are universally favorable. News stories tend to mirror this 2014 Washington Post article’s claim that “researchers have long found ties between having women on a company’s board of directors and better financial performance.”

And as Nicholas Kristoff wrote in The New York Times in 2013:

Scholarly research suggests that the best problem-solving doesn’t come from a group of the best individual problem-solvers, but from a diverse team whose members complement each other. That’s an argument for leadership that is varied in every way — in gender, race, economic background and ideology.

The truth is there’s actually no adequate scientific basis for these newsworthy assertions. And this lack of scientific evidence to guide such statements illustrates the troubled relations of science to advocacy and policy, that I have analyzed in an article in the current Journal of Social Issues.

Victoria writer and founder of the Right to Die Society of Canada John Hofsess was fortunate to be able to chose the time and manner of his own death and to die surrounded by his friends.

Hofsess' article “By the Time You Read This, I’ll Be Dead” was published on Toronto Life a few minutes after he died.

Between 1999 and 2001, I helped eight people die, including the poet Al Purdy. Now, as I prepare to take my own life, I’m ready to tell my story.

In December we asked for your support to help us bring a family fleeing the crisis in Syria to Canada. In the past few short months, you answered that call with nearly $10,000 in donations and pledges. This is in addition to the $17,000 we had confirmed before putting out the call

Never let anyone tell you that atheists won’t donate to charity. This is the proof of that generosity. Thank you so much.

I've posted a brief update of where our project is at on our blog. I hope you'll take a look and continue to support this important cause.

We will be looking for more people to volunteer, so please let us know if you might be able to help.

In December we asked for your support to help us bring a family fleeing the crisis in Syria to Canada. In the past few short months, you answered that call with nearly $10,000 in donations and pledges. This is in addition to the $17,000 we had confirmed before putting out the call.

Never let anyone tell you that atheists won’t donate to charity. This is the proof of that generosity. Thank you so much.

I want to give you all a brief update of where we're at in the process.

Nobody taught me to pray, that is, to raise my voice to a higher power when I feel thwarted, threatened, bereaved, ecstatic. Why, then, do I do it?

Anyone who believes in a divine being can legitimately ask that of me and point to the seemingly instinctive act of praying as evidence that there must be a god listening to our prayers. It’s a fair and instructive question that cannot be dismissed.

The key word in what has been said so far, I think, is ‘instinctive.’ When we are infants, and until we are perhaps entering our teens, we ‘instinctively’ call out first to our mothers, then to our fathers and mothers, for sustenance, protection, affirmation.

By adulthood – as young men and women – we become self-reliant, rebellious. We no longer look to our parents for succour, safety and guidance. But the need and habit for maternal and paternal intervention is deep-seated. Could it be that we perpetuate the security and comforts we once cried out to parents for in the person of an eternal, externalized archetype named God?

That seems a thesis worth studying, but I will leave it as a mere suggestion that there are responses, aside from puzzlement, to the question: If there is no God, why would we invent one? Why would we pray?

By Aaron W. Hughes, University of Rochester

Despite what we’re told, religion isn’t inherently peaceful. The assumption is largely based on the Protestant idea that religion is something spiritual and internal to the individual and that it’s corrupted by politics and other mundane matters.

But people kill in the name of religion, just as they love in its name. To claim that one of these alternatives is more authentic than the other is not only problematic, it’s historically incorrect.

By R. Kelly Garrett, The Ohio State University

Following Justice Antonin Scalia’s death on February 13, a former criminal investigator for Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department named William O. Ritchie took to Facebook.

“My gut tells me there is something fishy going on in Texas,” he wrote.

With those words, Ritchie helped draw national attention to an emerging conspiracy theory: that Scalia may have been murdered.

By Rebecca Hale and Jennifer Kalmanson, originally published on TheHumanist.com.

Editor's note: This article was written by leaders of the American Humanist Association. While we are legally separate organization, we share a mission of promoting secular humanism and social justice. To help shape our own strategic plan, consider becoming a member and running for our board of directors. Our AGM will be coming up later this spring.

The rising tide of nonreligious people in the United States is accompanied by an intense focus on the “New Atheism,” which, rightly or wrongly, is critiqued as being not vocal enough or downright anti-progressive when it comes to social justice issues like women’s rights, racial equality, and the environment. Those familiar with the movement understand that when one declares themselves to be an “atheist,” they are simply saying that they do not believe in any gods; it doesn’t naturally imply a commitment to any particular social contract, whereas “humanist” means something additional. Atheism is what we don’t believe; humanism is what we do believe.

By Becky Garrison, originally published on TheHumanist.com

Seven years after the United Church of Canada minister Gretta Vosper penned With or Without God (Harper Collins, 2008), the UCC chose to examine her suitability for ministry. In 2001 Vosper had begun exploring, with her West Hill United Church in Scarborough, Ontario, how to create services that enable those who wish to come together in community to do so around aspirational values and without the presence of a supernatural, interventionist God.

Last week we won a major victory for secularism. Not only did the politicians on Parliament's assisted dying committee put the rights of patients first, they cited our arguments when they recommended "that if a health care facility is publicly funded, it must provide medical assistance in dying."

If this recommendation is adopted by Parliament, it would mean that the billion dollars that BC is giving to religious hospitals could be withheld unless those institutions uphold patients' rights.

We still face an uphill battle though. Catholic Providence Healthcare, which runs St Paul's in downtown Vancouver, has refused to allow assisted dying in its facilities and BC Health Minister Terry Lake is lining up to defend their privilege to do so.

Please make a donation to help us make the case that people, not buildings, have rights and that Catholic bishops shouldn't have a veto on the healthcare of Canadians.