On 2016 Oct 04, Quinn Capers commented:

Thank you for your interest in our work. Briefly, we are aware of theories that the IAT may measure something other than racial bias. However, regardless of what they are actually measuring, IAT results predict discriminatory behavior. Secondly, it was beyond the scope of the paper to control for the Hawthorne effect, but we acknowledge that behaviors could have changed because committee members were aware that they were being observed. Finally, we agree that an analysis of the composition of the class following the IAT should be accompanied by full admissions statistics pre- and post- the exercise. This is provided in the paper and commented on (Table 2). Word count restrictions prevented us from including this information in the abstract. Feel free to email me after reading the full length paper.

On 2016 Sep 30, Thomas Heston commented:

Does the black-white implicit association test measures racial bias? Or something else? (Kaufman SB. Psych Today 28-Jan-2011 https://goo.gl/h3jvw1). Suffice it to say that there does exist at least some controversy. The authors also failed to control for the Hawthorne Effect (BMJ 2015;351:h4672 http://bit.ly/2dqvD4p). The statement that the class that matriculated following the IAT exercise was the most diverse is really meaningless without examining the applicant pool. Examine bias? Yes, by all means. But don't ignore potential test bias and researcher bias which may make the results unscientific.

On 2016 Sep 30, Thomas Heston commented:

Does the black-white implicit association test measures racial bias? Or something else? (Kaufman SB. Psych Today 28-Jan-2011 https://goo.gl/h3jvw1). Suffice it to say that there does exist at least some controversy. The authors also failed to control for the Hawthorne Effect (BMJ 2015;351:h4672 http://bit.ly/2dqvD4p). The statement that the class that matriculated following the IAT exercise was the most diverse is really meaningless without examining the applicant pool. Examine bias? Yes, by all means. But don't ignore potential test bias and researcher bias which may make the results unscientific.

On 2016 Oct 04, Quinn Capers commented:

Thank you for your interest in our work. Briefly, we are aware of theories that the IAT may measure something other than racial bias. However, regardless of what they are actually measuring, IAT results predict discriminatory behavior. Secondly, it was beyond the scope of the paper to control for the Hawthorne effect, but we acknowledge that behaviors could have changed because committee members were aware that they were being observed. Finally, we agree that an analysis of the composition of the class following the IAT should be accompanied by full admissions statistics pre- and post- the exercise. This is provided in the paper and commented on (Table 2). Word count restrictions prevented us from including this information in the abstract. Feel free to email me after reading the full length paper.