"A few students—all of them white guys, Wu remembers—would hang around to ask about the research and to probe for flaws in its design. Wu still didn’t believe in ESP, but she found herself defending the experiments to these mansplaining guinea pigs. "
Was this race- and gender-related jab really necessary? (Honest, non-rhetorical question.)
No, it was a mistake and distracts from the article. But empirically, the 3 previous discussions about this article have been too distracted by this "easy target" to discuss the interesting (to me) underlying issues, and have been user flagged to death. You can find others' answers to your question by searching for the earlier postings. So without malice, I downvoted your comment not because it's wrong to ask, but to try to move it to the bottom of the page where it can do less harm.
"A few students—all of them white guys, Wu remembers—would hang around to ask about the research and to probe for flaws in its design. Wu still didn’t believe in ESP, but she found herself defending the experiments to these mansplaining guinea pigs. "
Was this race- and gender-related jab really necessary? (Honest, non-rhetorical question.)