I believe it does. There's a difference between considering i.e. disease transmission in your example, in which case any modicum of evidence that you don't find could be very important, and legacy alumni giving, in which case there should be noticeable evidence in support of it otherwise the conclusion is that it's insignificant. Therefore, it does answer the question in this example: legacy status does not appear to have a significant impact on alumni giving as there is no (or difficult to find) evidence in support of that claim. The fact that there might be a small amount of evidence in support of it if you look hard enough does not mean that suddenly legacy giving is a significant factor in that consideration.

The article clearly says there's no evidence of a "casual relationship between legacy preference policies and total alumni giving."

Can you explain your point further? Maybe you are aware of better data than what was used in the cited study?

Maybe the individual legacy preferences don’t influence it but the knowledge they exist does. For instance, there is no statistical likelihood of winning the jackpot from buying a lottery ticket and people keep buying tickets when they don’t win - but if the jackpot just got removed, do you think that would affect people’s choice to buy a ticket?

Wouldn't that still cause a correlation between schools that have legacy scholarships and alumni giving? In your lotto ticket example, there is a correlation between the jackpot and the number of tickets sold.

Yes, that was what I was saying.

The "no evidence" comment is not made by the paper itself - it was made about a much weaker 2008 study. The linked paper actually claims that legacy admissions do increase alumni giving by implicitly favoring wealthier families. I think both papers have flaws.

The linked study literally says “our primary finding…is that there is no statistical evidence of a casual relationship.” It also controls for wealth: “after inclusion of appropriate controls, including wealth…”

Maybe we’re referencing different studies. Which are you specifically referencing?

No, we're not. It controls for wealth, and then says that the policy itself affects the wealth of alumni, which makes it entirely inappropriate to remove that as a variable. In essence they are arguing that legacy preference systems are not what motivates higher donations, but they are a causal factor in the outcome of higher donations.

"the policy allows elite schools to over-select from their own wealthy alumni. In other words, the preference policy effectively allows elite schools essentially to discriminate based on socioeconomic status by accepting their own wealthy alumni families rather than basing admissions on merit alone."

" we show that prior to controlling for wealth, there is a strong correlation between alumni giving and legacy preferences. This suggests that greater alumni giving at elite schools with legacy preferences is driven by the school’s ability to over-select from their own wealthy alumni populations—not a result of the preference policies themselves inducing additional giving."

I think you are pointing out a related but slightly different problem. The question being asked is not "Does admitting wealthy students lead to higher alumni donations?" but rather "Does admitting legacy students lead to higher alumni donations?".

The latter one is what is being measured when they control for wealth and conclude that the practice of admitting based on legacy status does not result, in itself, with higher alumni donations. But like you said, when it becomes a means to admitting wealthier students, it can result in the former. But the two questions shouldn't be conflated and measuring them as distinct questions is why it's important to control for wealth in the methodology.

They cannot be measured distinctly when one is a proxy for the other.

It seems like they are correlated, but I don't know that one is necessarily a good proxy for the other.

Would you apply that to, say, wealth and SAT scores?

> better data

I am personally aware of a very large donation to MIT with the express purpose of admitting the high schooler, and I am less acquainted with a similar situation at Harvard. I have personally seen another alumni development quid pro quo, not a monetary donation, at MIT. Honestly it seems like common sense that the two are related. The mistake from a scientific point of view is how to define legacy preferences and how to measure such impacts. It is certainly there, it’s an interesting question as to how to measure it.

At the risk of sounding glib, I was asking for data and not anecdotes.

>The mistake from a scientific point of view is how to define legacy preferences and how to measure such impacts.

The paper looked to define legacy preferences using multiple datasets where the school measured the importance of alumni relations in admissions. The datasets had to agree for (e.g., both say that alumni relations are "very important" regarding admissions). The measure used in the studies that showed no evidence was the level of alumni donations. It's pretty easily quantifiable. Other studies cited show that when legacy admissions were abolished there was not a statistically significant change in alumni donations.

>I have personally seen another alumni development quid pro quo, not a monetary donation, at MIT. Honestly it seems like common sense that the two are related.

You're comparing apples to oranges. The question is whether consideration of legacy status in admissions is causally linked to greater alumni giving. What you're asking is whether wealthy parents are willing to pay bribes to get their dull children into particular institutions. The two aren't comparable, because rich parents don't need to be alumni to pay bribes.