Mortality rate for Black babies plummets when they’re delivered by Black doctors • Hacker News Board

Re: Mortality rate for Black babies plummets when they’re delivered by Black doctors

#11

Post by gamblor956 » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

For those trying to assert some sort of bizarre abortion-based theory for skewing the statistics: the study is specifically only about the mortality rate of Black babies delivered in a medical facility.

It does not study the mortality rate of babies whose mothers had Black obstetricians during their pregnancies.

The researchers did not attempt to identify a cause for this disparity in this study, and noted only that this disparity does not appear to exist for other doctor-patient racial pairings where the mother was not Black.

The point of this study was simply to identify that a disparity exists, so that follow-up research can identify why and hopefully address the disparity in outcomes.

Re: Mortality rate for Black babies plummets when they’re delivered by Black doctors

#12

Post by x86_64Ubuntu » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

sz4kerto wrote: post #4

It would be really-really important to use pre-registration especially in socially sensitive studies like this one. It is possible that these numbers are artifacts even if the stated p value is low. I'm not saying that the study is wrong, just that shocking results like this one need extreme methodological rigor behind them before we start telling everyone that white doctors are killing black babies etc. https://en.m…

Black America is well aware of the fact that being black means that we will run into sub-part outcomes in US society. This isn't news to our community. Just because it causes feelings of racial anxiety in other groups doesn't mean it shouldn't be mentioned and be studied.

Before such a study, when black Americans would have noted that something seemed off, we would have been met with "You need data to back that up, X can't be racist!!!". Now that there is data to back up what we've known, it's "Your p-value is wrong!!!"

Re: Mortality rate for Black babies plummets when they’re delivered by Black doctors

#13

Post by polishdude20 » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

Just speculating here but could it be that, in neighborhoods where a black person is more likely to become a doctor, those neighborhoods have a better healthcare system in place? The cities/neighborhoods with higher black poverty probably have less black doctors in general.

Re: Mortality rate for Black babies plummets when they’re delivered by Black doctors

#14

Post by CyberRabbi » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #10

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 th…

I 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.

Re: Mortality rate for Black babies plummets when they’re delivered by Black doctors

#15

Post by tpoacher » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 5:51 PM UTC

What an eggregious claim that black doctors avoid risky childbirths in black communities and pass them to white doctors instead. WP is being racist again.

Re: Mortality rate for Black babies plummets when they’re delivered by Black doctors

#16

Post by x86_64Ubuntu » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 5:52 PM UTC

CyberRabbi wrote: post #14

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #10

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 th…

I 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.

Did you read the study? What are the technical reasons for the study being flawed.

Re: Mortality rate for Black babies plummets when they’re delivered by Black doctors

#17

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

sz4kerto wrote: post #4

It would be really-really important to use pre-registration especially in socially sensitive studies like this one. It is possible that these numbers are artifacts even if the stated p value is low. I'm not saying that the study is wrong, just that shocking results like this one need extreme methodological rigor behind them before we start telling everyone that white doctors are killing black babies etc. https://en.m…

[deleted]

Re: Mortality rate for Black babies plummets when they’re delivered by Black doctors

#18

Post by iagovar » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

> The root, she says, lies in structural racism.

Another HNr deleted his comment, but this needs more substance before thrown around. When I was studying sociology I noticed this trend of finding some general stat and the author follows with statements such as is systemic xism.

Most of the times it comes as intellectually weak. Why not researching further, before typing such gross statement. Often it is a non sequitur fallacy, and probably a sort of ecological fallacy too.

Of course, her recipe is not only to train doctors in the particular needs of other races (IDK the validity of this, since I'm not physician nor a biologist) and follow up this people and check them often, but to train doctors on racism and social justice.

Re: Mortality rate for Black babies plummets when they’re delivered by Black doctors

#19

Post by croissants » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

If you're interested in the raw data behind these conclusions, it looks like the paper supplement [1] has some.

One potentially meaningful point from Table S1A of the supplement: it looks like there are 360k white doctor-black patient observations and 97k black doctor-black patient observations, and the mean length of stay for white doctor-black patient observations is 4.73 days vs. 3.37 days for black doctor-black patient. If I understand these figures, that means that on average white doctors keep black patients 40% longer than black doctors keep black patients.

I don't know what that means for the quality of care. Is keeping patients around good or bad? The Medicaid/Medicare/Self-pay numbers are very similar for the two groups, so it shouldn't be that the black patients going to white doctors are just paying for more care, right? Does it say something about case difficulty?

I know very little about this topic. Hopefully somebody who knows more can chime in. But that gap seems...significant?

[1] https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/suppl/2020/08/12/191340511...

Re: Mortality rate for Black babies plummets when they’re delivered by Black doctors

#20

Post by Bostonian » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

Doctors care about the welfare of all of their patients. If the study is valid, we should learn what the black doctors are doing differently that reduces infant mortality, so that other doctors can follow suit.