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Simple Answers for Simple People
So, I’ve been trying to cut back on my political input/output lately, so I’m trying to return to my old lurking ways. But a CNN article title I saw on Parler gave me pause. So yes, I’m doing a bad job of cutting back.
Black newborns 3 times more likely to die when looked after by White doctors
It’s a pretty short article but basically says that in looking at 1.8 million hospital births in Florida from 1992 through 2015, that when cared for by White (hey we got our ‘W’!) doctors, Black newborns were three times more likely to die than if cared for by Black physicians.
The effect also appeared to be stronger in more complicated cases, and when hospitals deliver more Black newborns.
It says the authors did not speculate about the reasons behind this (until they did) but decided that it means hospitals should work to reduce it and explore a connection to institutional racism.
Has ‘institutional racism’ become the new answer to life, the universe, and everything?
I mean, this is a huge difference that BEGS for further investigation. And I can’t believe that the data they were using was something like this where more analysis couldn’t be done:
| Newborns | Births | Deaths |
| White | 900,000 | 1 |
| Black | 900,000 | 3 |
I admit, I haven’t read the underlying paper because 1) it requires a subscription, and 2) my brain is small. But I did read a bit of the summary, and it states that other research has shown that patient-physician concordance for underrepresented minorities can “ameliorate outgroup biases, boost communication, and increase trust” (is part of academic training finding bigger words to replace smaller words with?). I can even buy the last two to an extent.
So maybe babies have a problem with communication and trust because they see someone of a different skin color? Holy carp! Black babies are racist!
No, I don’t believe that. Please interwebs don’t copy and paste to make it seem like I believe that. You aren’t better than that, but don’t do it anyway.
My point is that even if the underlying academic article might have some value, the CNN article does not, except to lead one to believe that White (which would be better – a white shirt with a big black capital W on it, or a black shirt with a white W?) doctors are somehow letting black babies die where they would have saved the white baby because whether consciously or unconsciously they or the system are biased. If I was a white doctor (I only play one on TV) then I would be a bit frosted. And I’d also want to find out what the hell IS behind those numbers.
It’s just so frustrating when we look at numbers and then attach them to a solution without doing the investigatory steps in between.
I know this was linked on another Ricochet story, but if you haven’t read it, read The Challenge of Marxism on Quillette. I think this is another example of side effects of that process.
If you’ve made it thus far through my less than stellar writing, two points to Hufflepuff because I heard they are the most inclusive of the four schools. And a thank you to my dear reader.
Published in Healthcare
Math is not my best subject, but to extrapolate that out don’t we have to take into account the percentage of Americans who are doctors? Our population is roughly 330,000,000 of which there are 1,000,000 doctors. What percentage is that? Then once you arrive at the percentage of doctors in the USA as a whole, then it’s possible to arrive at the percentage of black doctors within the US population. For example, roughly 86% of all doctors are white or Asian, but the population as a whole is not 86% white and Asian but closer to 68%. Does that make any sense?
Well, it seems to me the percentage of Americans who are doctors is independent of the percentage of doctors that are white vs other races, including black. “Fairness” in representation of doctors, as with any other category, would be based on the overall population. A very small percentage of Americans are in Congress too, but “fairness” would still mean 13% of Congress “should be” black. Same with the very small percentage of Americans who are in Congress, vs how many of them “should be” women.
And really, if 13% of all doctors are black, the percentage of black people who are doctors would still be very small. Same with, if 50% of Congress was women, there would still be a very small percentage of women who are in Congress.
And really, that “only” 8% of doctors – or OB/GYNs anyway – are black, is really saying the same thing anyway.
You can say that either 8% of doctors – or OB/GYNs anyway – are black, or that 92% aren’t black. Whichever you figure will get you the most traction with your argument.
If you’re talking babies and death you’re talking emergency situations. If you’re talking about babies, death and well baby visits, then you’re talking murder.
Granted they might BECOME emergencies when problems arise, but that’s not what I get from the OP. They’re talking about births, and who oversees the babies afterward, etc.
It’s good that you can’t believe it because it was nothing like this. I read the article, and PMed it to the author of the OP. I’m not comfortable sharing it with everyone because of copyright. The data were collected over 23 years (1992-205). There are about 1,500 infant deaths per year in Florida, so over 30,000 in the period of the study. That’s your last column. If only the infant mortality rate were 1 or 3 per million. It’s more like 6,000 per million births. So, no, the data they were using was not that flimsy.
Possible methodological problems have been pointed out in the comments. The authors did attempt to look at other confounding factors, specifically they found that more complex cases showed a greater disparity:
I’m not going to spend the time to do a thorough analysis of the paper. However, I did notice one interesting omission. The key result is presented in Fig. 1 (below). The authors did not see fit to include the statistics for white patient/white physician. It would be interesting to see how that compares. The fact they omitted it is suspicious.
OLS stands for ordinary least squares.
Get back to me when they’ve studied more than just Florida.
All babies are racist. Babies smile and look at people of their own race more and they smile and look at people who speak their language. This is according to the book, Just Babies, we were born to hate our fellow man. My the Buddha have mercy on us.
Seriously? This is your response? I guess Florida is too small a sample, too insignificant, far more bigoted than all other states, … something. I take it that you’ve written off Florida as a legitimate part of the United States. In case you were wondering, Florida is the third most populous state in the Union with over 21 M people.
There are many possible legitimate critiques of this work but it’s only Florida isn’t one of them.
I just don’t think Florida is sufficiently representative of the nation as a whole, and that’s just for starters. For age mixture, race mixture, share of physicians who are OB/GYN vs geriatrics… percentage of drug use… criminal activity… all kinds of things. And then after that, you’ve got all the other flaws to deal with: shares of comorbidities and all the rest. Getting beyond Florida is just the START of correcting for those problems.