I suspect that radiologists could identify race from a plain chest x-ray if they were given the patient’s race and asked to start noticing the difference. They

I suspect that radiologists could identify race from a plain chest x-ray if they were given the patient’s race and asked to start noticing the difference. They just aren’t doing it because, if it’s important, you can just look at the patient. There are a lot of things in medicine that aren’t in literature, but are well-known among certain practitioners. I’m an anesthesiologist and practice in an area with a large African-American population. About 10-15% (rough guess) of people of West African descent will have a ridiculously strong salivary response to certain drugs (muscarinic agonists). As in, after one dose their mouths will be full of saliva in seconds. We don’t have East Africans for comparison, so I can’t say it’s a pan-Bantu thing, but I have seen it in a Nigerian who lived here. Not in the literature, but we all know it. I had a (EDIT: non-anesthesia) colleague ask me about a hypersecretory response from such a drug. I said, oh, was he black? Yes, how did I know? Because we give those drugs all the time and have eyes. It’s very rare to see in European-descended populations.