Posted by John Gardenier on July 12, 1999 at 14:33:15:
In Reply to: Request for Results of Committee's Consideration of Previous Comment posted by Jay Chmiel on July 02, 1999 at 15:03:21:
: Section II.F.6 of the Guidelines states,
: "Use professional qualifications and the
: contributions of the individual as the basis for
: decisions regarding ... candidacy for ... awards.
: Strive to avoid ... discrimination against
: statistical practitioners on professionally
: irrelevant bases such as ... sex, ... age, ...".
: Don’t several current statistical awards already
: violate this guideline, such as the ASA Biometrics
: Section’s Byar Young Investigator Award, the COPSS
: Presidents’ Award, and ASA’s Gertrude Cox Scholarship
: Award? (Candidacy for the first two awards is
: restricted to individuals under 40 and application for
: the third is limited to women.) If so, it would seem
: that either the Ethics Guidelines or the criteria for
: these awards need to be changed.
: Jay Chmiel
: P.S. This is a repeat of my comment on Version VI.
: What were the committee’s thoughts when they
: considered this issue and decided not to amend
: this section in Version VII?
There has been no further rationale offered beyond that posted in response to your comment on Revision VI. It is repeated here for your convenience.
Thank you for your comment, Joseph. Others have pointed out that some
grant or contract awards may be limited to U. S. citizens (or, more
generally, citizens of the country funding the work). Personally, I do
not feel that having special awards for special categories of people is
discriminatory. It would be discriminatory if specific categories of
people were _excluded_ from award eligibility. Some people may regard
such a distinction as "parsing" in a perjorative sense because the
practical effect remains that groups of people are ineligible in either
case. The moral intent may well justify the parsing.