Posted on 07/06/2023 9:16:21 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Mistakes happen to all of us but that doesn’t mean they aren’t pretty embarrassing. That’s especially true when the claim being made is a) obviously improbable and b) you have an entire staff of helpers who also somehow missed it. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made the mistake in her dissent on affirmative action.
Beyond campus, the diversity that UNC pursues for the betterment of its students and society is not a trendy slogan. It saves lives. For marginalized communities in North Carolina, it is critically important that UNC and other area institutions produce highly educated professionals of color. Research shows that Black physicians are more likely to accurately assess Black patients’ pain tolerance and treat them accordingly (including, for example, prescribing them appropriate amounts of pain medication). For high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live, and not die.
The NY Times wrote an editorial about the affirmative action decision which highlighted this particular claim.
…diversity — whether on campus, in business, or in government and society at large — remains a vital goal for any institution, and it will now be more difficult to achieve. The word is not a “trendy slogan,” as Justice Jackson wrote in her dissent. Diversifying medical schools by opening up the profession to Black physicians can save lives, she notes. Black infants, for example, are more likely to survive under the care of a Black doctor.
That dramatic claim about diversity saving the lives of black babies was apparently handed to Jackson in an amicus brief submitted by the Association of American Medical Colleges. However, the AMC and Jackson were both way off in their claims about the study.
…the study does not claim to find a doubling in survival rates for black newborns who have a black attending doctor. Instead, in its most fully specified model, it reports that 99.6839% of black babies born with a black attending physician survived compared with 99.5549% of black babies born with white attending physicians, a difference of 0.129%.
The survival rate of 99.6839% is not double 99.5549%.
The claim that survival rates for black newborns double when they have black physicians is just plain false. The fact that neither the Association of American Medical Colleges nor Jackson’s clerks could read and properly understand a medical study is an alarming indication for the current state of both medical and legal education.
It is true that black women have a much higher infant mortality rate which seems to be connected to low birthweight. The exact causes of that gap are not know though it is known that black women are significantly less likely (about 14%) to get prenatal care. All that to say, the racial gap in infant mortality which Jackson was talking about does exist but the specific claim that black babies are twice as likely to survive with black doctors is false. Working backwards, her claim based on this, that diversity “saves lives,” seems a little shaky.
This wasn’t the only obvious error in progressive dissents. Justice Sotomayor also made at least one in her dissent on the 303 Creative case:
Sotomayor also used the 2016 mass murder at the gay-friendly Pulse nightclub in Orlando Fla., to prove “significantly higher… rates of violent victimization” for LGBT people. Omar Mateen, the Pulse shooter, confirmed after the massacre that he planned to attack Disney World, was deterred by the park’s police presence, and resolved to shoot up the first Google search result for “Orlando nightclubs.” Although the media claimed that the Pulse shooter specifically targeted gay people, the FBI has found no evidence to prove such.
This seems like a pretty simple thing to get right. If you type “Pulse nightclub shooting” into Google, the first result is a Wikipedia page which reads:
In July 2016, law enforcement officials reported that the FBI—after conducting “interviews and an examination of his computer and other electronic media”—had not found any evidence that Mateen targeted Pulse because the nightclub was a venue for gays or whether the attack was motivated by homophobia. According to witnesses, he did not make any homophobic comments during the shooting. Furthermore, nothing has been found confirming the speculation that he was gay and used gay dating apps; however, the FBI “has found evidence that Mateen was cheating on his wife with other women”. Officials noted that “there is nothing to suggest that he attempted to cover up his tracks by deleting files”.
Again, everyone makes mistakes but when you have an entire staff to check on things like this for you, they should be easier to avoid.
correction: 20 divided 60 = 0.333333 not .08. That was a ypto.
3% of the American populus is Asian heritage. Yet, 19 percent of Harvard admissions is Asians and it is estimated that if admissions were based solely on academic merit, 41% of admissions would be Asians. That is the way it should be in a true constitutional color blind merit based society. The US populus is over 60% white. Yet, only 43% of Harvard students are white. I had to chuckle at the brief by the Asian plaintiff in the Harvard case. Part of it boiled down to if you are going to discriminate in favor of black and brown preference, we have no objection so long as you take if from the white tribe not the Asian tribe. With friends like these to throw your tribe under the bus, who needs enemies! lol
A quibble, but that should be "41%" higher. Now, to the "meat" of your reasoning:
If you administer a procedure (operation, vaccination, pill, or what-have-you) to literally millions of people, and then subsequently notice that, say, 100 people died when the procedure was administered by a Black, but that 141 people died when administered by a White, then the race of the medical personnel is clearly a MAJOR factor. (This assumes that a multi-variant analysis was made and other possible variables - like the fact that Black physicians might tend to prefer to work in high-income neighborhoods, while White physicians might actually seek out ghettos, etc.)
Don't wish to get into an argument with you; just pointing out that my math and my logic are correct.
Dividing the difference in mortality rate by the overall survival rate (which is nearly UNITY) is mathematically possible, but yields a meaningless result.
Would like to know what the actual absolute numbers were.
Regards,
These liberal dissents are weak in legal substance and are essentially political advocacy statements.
Don't dispute your math - just your logic.
Extremes might make it more obvious:
Imagine administering a procedure on 8 billion human beings (the pop. of the planet).
An indefinite number of White people die (in this example, we aren't interested in their fates).
Of the Black people, one hundred die.
Sixty of the Black people died under the care of a White physician, the other 40 under the care of a Black physician (we assume that the differing number of Black vs. White physicians has been controlled for - in our example, we can pretend that there were an equal no. of Black and White physicians).
Wouldn't you be extremely curious about the differing mortalities (disaggregated by race)?
Or would you really simply "divide by the total rate of survival?" After all, literally billions survived the procedure!
Again, don't want to "lock horns" with you. But I sincerely believe that, after a little reflection, you'll agree with me.
I maintain that the observed difference in the real-world study is probably attributable to OTHER FACTORS (incl. small sample size, as you point out).
Regards,
I always find that the use of “simple stats” is nothing but a tool to distort truth, things are usually more complex. Same with the “wage gap”.
I could see a study with some numbers like:
Block doctors: 1 in 1000 black babies die
White doctors: 2 in 1000 black babies die
So, “twice as many babies died in the hands of white doctors vs. black doctors”. It would be an absurd basis for anything though, as this is a single study with a limited sample size and would fall into the margin of error & is statistical noise.
But that is what the left always does with “simple stats”. Anytime you hear them, just scratch the surface, just a little, and it falls apart. Remember the Roe vs Wade argument? That “back alley abortions kill xxxx women per year!”...yeah, they admit they just pulled the number out of their a**.
It’s disturbing when a SC justice does it though, it’ll be repeated ad-nauseam.
RE:3% of the American populus is Asian heritage. Yet, 19 percent of Harvard admissions is Asians and it is estimated that if admissions were based solely on academic merit, 41% of admissions would be Asians
Tellme about it. One of the most competitiveHigh Schools in New York City — Stuyvesant High School ( where an entrance exam is required) is close to 40% Asian !
And it’s gotten so skewed towards Asians in UCLA that people have taken to calling it University of Caucasians Lost Among Asians :)
Affirmative action on full display. Watch the VP or Transportation Secretary for more examples.
She is a very stupid woman. Worse is she believes she is brilliant. Sotomayor is another moron but not quite as stupid as Brown. Kagen, unfortunately, is smart but a ruthless marxist and the most dangerous one of the feminazi brigade.
F.O. and die grammar douchebag. The subject is bot grammar, it is simple math. But obviously your IQ is not high enough to comprehend that.
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