4 ms·
This IS NOT BIAS! This is physics! As someone else pointed out, this isn't only about melanin in the skin. Darkened skin for any reason will cause this (burns,
by slowmovintarget 6y ago
This IS NOT BIAS! This is physics!
As someone else pointed out, this isn't only about melanin in the skin. Darkened skin for any reason will cause this (burns, smoking, dirt, etc...). Medical personnel are trained to account for this partial accuracy.
The other fact is that there are newer techniques being worked on to improve the technology.
- throwanem 6y ago> This IS NOT BIAS! This is physics! Bias doesn't happen in physics. Bias happens where humans and physics interact. > Medical personnel are trained to account for this Medical personnel aren't the only people who use pulse oximeters and need them to read reliably. Beyond that, this thread and the article it discusses are full of examples of why "medical personnel are trained" isn't enough of an answer here.
- dredmorbius 6y agoBoth measurement and social/cultural bias occur in physics: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q="bias%20in%20physics"&btnG=Search&as_sdt=800000000001&as_sdtp=on https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q="bias%20in%20physics"&b... "Cargo Cult Science" (esp. Millikan). http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm Einstein to M. Curie: https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/04/19/einstein-curie-letter/ https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/04/19/einstein-curie-lett... Planck: Science advances one funeral at a time. (See also Kuhn.) https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck
- throwanem 6y agoYes, and the point that I'm making is that "this isn't bias, this is physics" is missing the point. Yes, the way in which varying wavelengths of light interact with varying configurations of bulk matter is a physical phenomenon, and not subject to bias. But that isn't the same as saying, as the comment to which I originally replied seemed to do, that no bias can exist in the way in which that phenomenon is interpreted by humans.
- dredmorbius 6y agoI suspect instances of bias introduced by other-than cultural, social, human, and perceptual dynamics are also present.
- klyrs 6y ago> This IS NOT BIAS! This is physics! You sound pretty emotional, maybe tone it down and try to think objectively. Just because there's an underlying physical reason for the device to be inaccurate on a subset of the population, doesn't mean that it's fair to use that device on the impacted population. It's been accepted by the medical community, despite the additional training required to correctly use the device -- amounting to guesswork when the medical personnel remember that it's necessary. Accounting for human error, this means that affected populations will receive a lower quality of care. Just a hypothetical. Would it be accepted if it was accurate for black women, and required guesswork when treating white men? Because there is a long history of significant bias in medical studies. Just because "it's just physics" explains the device's flaw, doesn't mean that acceptance of a flawed device isn't a result of systemic bias.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- oivey 6y agoPhysics describes how oxygen saturated blood looks in the infrared, but using that information in a device is engineering. The engineers who design these devices should have better understood how something obvious like skin color would bias the measurements. It seems like the physics could be exploited again via a visible light sensor that detects darker skin. This is absolutely bias, and it is entirely due to engineering choices made by people, not nature.
- dllthomas 6y agoWhen a measurement device is, in some settings, consistently off in one direction... that's one of the most central definitions of bias.