A ‘Harvard Study’ Doesn’t Disprove Racial Bias in Officer-Involved Shootings

7/16/16

If you have been active on social media for the last week or a reader of the New York Times there is a good chance you have seen people citing a Harvard Study (it didn’t come from Harvard) that disproves racial bias in police shootings.  When I read the study I found it interesting, but I was curious as to how accurate it really was.  I found it improbable that the study could come to this conclusion when blacks are shot at a rate 2.5 times more than whites by the police.  I was prepared to do research on this, but I was lucky in that the first words I put into Google pulled up this Snopes piece on the same topic.  They beat me and did a fantastic and thorough job.

Results: The study was severely flawed because it relied solely on police accounts, which most certainly contain biased reporting.  I suggest reading the Snopes article and judging for yourself.  Here is the link to the Snopes article: http://www.snopes.com/2016/07/15/harvard-study-officer-involved-shootings/

Left vs. Right Bias: How we rate the bias of media sources