>Do you mean "race would never have any effect on their hiring decision" - even unconsciously?

By "making a decison based on race" I mean making a conscious decision in which race is a significant factor. If you want me to be more specific, I'll restate that as: in my estimation, any racial bias that may exist among the scientists I've met is not significant enough to in aggregate result in a difference greater than 1% in the ratio of people of any particular ethnicity hired compared to people of other ethnicities. I'd suspect other biases have far greater effect, e.g. against people from no-name universities.

I find your answer confusing. You initially clarify that you're talking about conscious decisions but your later claim is broad enough to include both conscious and unconscious bias.

I might agree that conscious racial bias is rare but I would find it harder to accept that unconscious racial bias is as uncommon as you claim. Does that sound reasonable?