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Even though there are only 3 comments in the thread, they are still rife with dismissive and bad-faith arguments. It's extremely telling how when black America
by x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
Even though there are only 3 comments in the thread, they are still rife with dismissive and bad-faith arguments. It's extremely telling how when black America mentions something about systemic racism in the context of the US, the response is "what's the p-value", "I don't like that sample size", "correlation != causation".
The article has studies with authors from the BIG 10 and with Ivy League heritage, but it's the mention of race that causes people to trot out canned and thinly supported reasons of doubt. Here is one of the studies if anyone is interested.
https://1410c6d1-d135-4b4a-a0cf-5e7e63a95a5c.filesusr.com/ugd/c11158_150b03cf5fbb484bbdf1a7e0aabc54fb.pdf https://1410c6d1-d135-4b4a-a0cf-5e7e63a95a5c.filesusr.com/ug...
- CyberRabbi 6y agoI used to take these results at face value because I am against racism, but time and time again many of these analyses have been shown to be flawed so now I am more critical. Has nothing to do with not liking the conclusion.
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y agoDid you read the study? What are the technical reasons for the study being flawed.
- sockjuice 6y agoSadly, HN has been infested with a load of "I'm not racist, but" type racists, who will say anything to downplay the obvious racism in US society. Even when there is evidence.
- sz4kerto 6y agoI'm not sure. Psychology and sociology has such a horrible track record when it comes to reproducibility of studies that have some kind of political significance that we just have to be careful. In case of these topics, there's a relatively strong publication pressure here. Also: the raw data is unfortunately not enough without pre-registration. (For obvious reasons.) "bad faith" is absolutely required in science. Especially in sociology and psychology, unfortunately.
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y agoI'm not sure there is a crisis of reproducibility in a study like this. We can tell with accuracy what the race of the physician is, the race of the baby and whether or not the baby dies or not.
- AzzieElbab 6y agoWe also can’t tell what is the death rate of all babies delivered by black doctors from this study
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y agoWhat does that have to do with anything?
- AzzieElbab 6y agoMaybe they picked up outstanding doctors who deliver outstanding results regardless of patients race? I mean the dataset is so small, one off can derail any conclusion
- croissants 6y ago> I mean the dataset is so small, one off can derail any conclusion What do you mean? Per the Supplement, their data comes from a pool of ~4k white doctors and ~500 black doctors, with hundreds of thousands of observations/patients. This dataset doesn't seem "so small"? [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/suppl/2020/08/12/1913405117.DCSupplemental/pnas.1913405117.sapp.pdf https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/suppl/2020/08/12/191340511...
- sz4kerto 6y agoIt really all depends on the methodology. I recommend some reading about 'p-hacking'. It is not that hard to find to find really shocking findings in large datasets -- the question is how hard you look. In this particular case, the question is how many hypotheses have been evaluated, i.e. has the author 'mined the data' for correlations. If yes, then the acceptable p value is much smaller than normal.
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- MarkMc 6y agoMy comment wasn't meant to be 'dismissive'. The idea that Black doctors provide a better standard of care for Black babies is a reasonable explanation for the data - perhaps even the most likely. I just thought other explanations should also be considered.