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

washingtonpost.com

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

#21

Post by sockjuice »

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…

Sadly, 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.

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

#22

Post by sockjuice »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #12
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…

Exactly this, but you will of course be downvoted here for pointing out this truth.

For a purportedly open-minded set of hackers who claim to follow their intellectual curiosity, too many people here are very closed-minded about racism.

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

#23

Post by DoreenMichele »

I am reminded of an anecdote I read many years ago where a White doctor talked about delivering Black babies by forceps because he couldn't be bothered to wait around and give such children the time he gave White children to come into this world without such brutal intervention.

I read a study many years ago from a country that valued boy children over girls. Boys -- especially first-born boys -- were more likely to be fed their favorite foods, taken to the doctor the same day instead of "in the morning" and so forth. These were relatively small things, like delaying seeing a doctor by a few hours, and nothing anyone would likely characterize as abuse of the girls, yet the difference could be measured in terms of mortality.

Think about this: You can die of dehydration in as little as two days and you can die of lack of oxygen within minutes.

These are not stats for people of frail health or something. Anyone can die of lack of oxygen within minutes, no matter their current state of health.

Making excuses and saying "But they must have been in a weakened state to begin with or something..." amounts to denial of the racism that we all know is rampant within this country.

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

#24

Post by dgellow »

CyberRabbi wrote: post #6

First: correlation is not causation. Second: what percentage of obgyns are black? Could Simpson’s paradox be at play?

For people who don't know:

> Simpson's paradox, which also goes by several other names, is a phenomenon in probability and statistics, in which a trend appears in several different groups of data but disappears or reverses when these groups are combined.

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

#25

Post by DoreenMichele »

iagovar wrote: post #18

> 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 sequitu…

I submitted this twelve days ago and it got no traction, but it's an interesting read: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25567826

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

#26

Post by sz4kerto »

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'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.

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

#27

Post by tzs »

This reminds me, in a general way, of another study I saw.

That one looked at patients at a walk-in clinic. Patients would be randomly assigned a doctor for their visit. The doctor would diagnose them, treat them, prescribe drugs if needed, and give them instructions on how to care for themselves after they left.

The study found that the patients were significantly more likely to follow the doctor's instructions after they left if the doctor was the same race as the patient.

Note that the doctors were not the patient's regular doctor. These were either patients who did not have a regular doctor, or patients who were going to the clinic because of an urgent condition when their regular doctor was not available. I'm not aware of any studied that looked at whether patients obey their regular doctor more often if the doctor is the same race as the patient.

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

#29

Post by 4gotunameagain »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #12
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…

Well we could avoid "black/white America" terms probably if we were more careful about the statistical significance of such inflammatory statements.

If it is indeed the case, then it is a horrible thing that should be researched more, and dealt with.

If not, publishing it is just racist and divisive.

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

#30

Post by dgellow »

gamblor956 wrote: post #11

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…

> The researchers did not attempt to identify a cause for this disparity in this study

I think that's an important point. I see people already jumping to the conclusion they prefer in other comments, but from what I understand we don't know what is causing the disparity. The paper points that it exists and should be studied more in details. Which is quite important, but it's too early to declare that a specific cause is _the cause_.

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