From Adam Grant:

At the outset, let me be clear: I don’t belong to a political party, and I don’t have an ideological stance on this issue. As a social scientist, I form my opinions based on credible evidence. My concerns about Hughes’s talk weren’t fueled by the argument he made, but by my perception that his conclusion was inconsistent with the best available data.

In early May, I was asked by TED to offer a confidential assessment of his talk. I responded with a summary of a meta-analysis of research on diversity ideologies, spanning 167 independent samples and 296 effect sizes. It appears that Hughes never received my full commentary—or my reply explaining why the results pose a major challenge to Hughes’s talk.

[Kudos to TED for responding and to Free Press for publishing it unedited. Grant’s response prompts the question, however: does TED do this kind of social-science assessment of all its TED Talks, or just the ones that involve black men offering heterodox opinions that annoy its employees? Furthermore, Grant’s ‘research’ sounds very carefully calculated to deliver a particular outcome, and furthermore labels the “color-blindness” approach as deficient while failing to identify a better alternative approach, either in research or in actual practice. Why didn’t TED just ask Grant to do his own TED talk and present his alternative? — Ed]