Study: Article Used Poor “Science” to Smear Reputations of White Doctors Treating Black Infants
New article critically examines the claim from a 2020 study claiming Black newborns have significantly lower mortality rates when cared for by Black physicians that failed to account for low birth weight….but was widely cited by the media anyway.
It looks like real science is back, baby!
Last week, I wrote a detailed review of a study that the Biden administration used to paint the life-essential gas, carbon dioxide, and warmer temperature as “toxic” to plants as part of the ludicrous “social cost of carbon” campaign. It turns out the paper was based on a seemingly cherry-picked data set.
This week, another “scientific” article that was published in 2020, which smeared the reputations of white doctors treating black infants, was given another look by a different set of eyes.
I suspect few Legal Insurrection readers will be surprised that data failing to fit the racialist narrative was not part of the assessment. This fall, the Proceedings from the National Academy of Science published a reexamination of the 2020 paper (linked here).
The September 2024 article, entitled “Physician–patient racial concordance and newborn mortality,” critically examines the claim from a prior study that black newborns have significantly lower mortality rates when cared for by black physicians.
The original research suggested that racial concordance between black doctors and black newborns reduced mortality rates, a finding that received widespread attention and was cited in discussions about healthcare “equity”.
Wow.
So in 2020, a study went viral claiming that Black infants have a much lower survival rate if cared for by White Doctors.
It was covered by almost every major outlet.
SCOTUS Justice Ketanji Jackson even cited it in a dissent.
Only it turned out to be completely false. pic.twitter.com/20X9wgdxf9
— AG (@AGHamilton29) April 1, 2025
This new analysis replicates the original study using the same dataset of Florida hospital discharges (1992–2015). Still, it introduces additional controls for very low birth weight (VLBW), a key determinant of neonatal mortality. The authors argue that the original study omitted this crucial variable, which disproportionately affects black newborns and accounts for a significant portion of neonatal deaths.
Their findings damn the conclusions of the original report:
- Once VLBW is controlled for, the racial concordance effect becomes substantially weaker and often statistically insignificant.
- Black newborns with very low birth weights are more likely to be attended by White physicians, which may explain the observed disparities in outcomes rather than racial concordance itself.
The authors conclude that addressing the higher incidence of very low birth weights among black newborns is likely more impactful in reducing mortality disparities than focusing solely on physician-patient racial matching. This challenges the earlier study’s implications and underscores the importance of considering omitted variables in healthcare research.
I constantly stress that the lack of reporters in the news media with a scientific background robust enough to reflect upon weaknesses in studies such as the one published in 2020 hurts the nation. A truly free country relies on being fully informed with the correct information.
Back in 2020, many Americans certainly disputed the assertions of the original article with data and information serious enough that follow-up questions and stories should have occurred.
Good for Black docs, and all that- but results like this are ~always the result of dubiously honest “backwards margin reporting.” For example, a 99.9% survival rate under Black doctors and 99.6% SR under white ones CAN technically be spun as a “300% difference in survival rates.” https://t.co/JLarCltky0
— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) August 18, 2020
Sadly, the false narrative was also clutched by Ketanji Brown Jackson as she referenced a study in her dissent in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard that examined racial disparities in newborn mortality rates.
Judging from her dissent in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, she believes black patients should only trust black doctors and white patients should only trust white doctors. It is a horribly racist and segregationist argument, but it is one she apparently believes based on a study of high-risk black newborns.
In her dissent, Jackson wrote, “Beyond campus, the diversity that UNC pursues for the betterment of its students and society is not a trendy slogan. It saves lives. … For high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live, and not die.”
The study Jackson cites examined data on Florida births between 1992 and 2015. The study did find that the survival rate for all black newborns was 99.1% with white doctors and 99.6% with black doctors. Already, we have two problems with Jackson’s claim. First, the data was on all black newborns, and second, the survival rate for both white and black doctors was over 99%, so her claim that “having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live, and not die,” is just false.”
Fortunately, reason prevailed in that particular SCOTUS case. However, the resentment the 2020 article created won’t dissipate anytime soon, nor do I suspect the elite media will spend any time promoting the new study.
Wow, the CAUCASITY of some of these people. Look at this article. As a black women myself, I can wholeheartedly agree with this study. There’s always been racial bias in the healthcare sector from the start. “Oh black can’t feel pain as much as white people do”
— Sunflower
(@btsinfl) August 19, 2020
So, once again, I am forced to do the science reporting our American press can’t and won’t do.
Question, though, for our elite media members: Where do our white physician heroes go to get their reputations back from your smears?
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy certainly has his work cut out for him, trying to reintroduce real science to entities focused on pushing science narratives.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Perhaps YT doctors need to refuse to treat black patients since we are not too far away from medical liability claims against YT doctors by black patients for malpractice, pfft, racial disparities in outcomes.
But good luck with finding treatment. Approximately 5% of physicians are black. I wonder how many of that 5% are neonatologists. Oh, yeah, that number is 3.5% of neonatologists.
But hey, let’s not let facts get in the way of Statwistics.
The sickest kids get sent to the best docs. Because they are the sickerst, they have much higher probablity of dying. the best docs for treating the sickest happen to be white docs
fwiw – on the flip side – A lot of renowned heart hospitals turn away the sickest heart patients so that they dont negatively affect their death rates.
Yup.
If you’re going in for serious surgery, you don’t necessarily want the doc with the best results (on paper). You want the doc the other docs and nurses would choose given a choice. The less capable surgeons will often cherry pick their surgeries to avoid bad numbers, the more capable ones will usually perform the most difficult procedures.
Hold true in war and sports as well. If cartoon aliens ever demand to decide the fate of earth based on a basketball game, you don’t put up a “championship” HS team with a perfect record, you put up a team comprised of the best pros you can get.
Whatever Leftists touch, they ultimately destroy.
What about mixed race babies? Were babies classified based on appearance, based on their parents’ appearance? Or did someone check a box and that was that?
Same for the doctors. Did they self-identify? (Rachel Dolezal, call your office!). And what if someone self-identified as Hispanic? Or Martian? Don’t they count?
This sort of thing was always going to be based on BS. That’s how this game is played.
Thanks for shining a light on the fake study. But, this being a conservative site, you’re preaching to the choir. The media folks who happily repeated the fake results will never admit, or even notice, that they did anything wrong.
According to the Ku Klux Klan, err, Democratic Party, even one drop of blood that includes black is 100% black. Even for the Magic Negro – Black, err, Barack Obama , he was and always will be black.
“Sadly, the false narrative was also clutched by Ketanji Brown Jackson”
That means she didn’t read it. She had made her mind up ahead of time and was just searching for material to justify her decision without regard to the facts of the case.
Liberals are good cherry pickers.
Funny how certain Supreme Court Just-us’s can identify race, but somehow can’t identify what a woman is.
It doesnt matter whether KJB or Sotomayor read it, neither have the intellectual capacity to understand it.
She has no background whatsoever to be able to see those flaws.
Is it my imagination or has every attempt by the Left to use “science” to advance their agenda proven to be fraudulent?
It also goes to show that some “peer reviewed” studies that are actually published are not “well reviewed”; when I was conducting a research methodology seminar for medical residents I I used anti gun articles published in the Journal of the AMA and the New England Journal of Medicine so the residents could critique their designs and the resulting conclusions. Needless to say, they found the articles to be quite easy to analyze and reject their conclusions.
You folks need to cut KBJ a break. She said she is not a biologist. /s
IMO both the article and media coverage were intentional garbage. It is widely known to virtually everyone that low birth weight is a major risk factor. Jusy ask any pregnant woman why she does not want her baby to be born too early.
Well, only if you include those who don’t abort their clump of cells before anyone can identify it as a baby.
Funny how infant mortality among blacks only includes those that aren’t targeted by black mothers and abortion mills as expendable.
Paging Planned Parenthood.
Medical science died in March 2020. Anyone not on board with the WuFlu deception risked their license, appointment, and grant funding. I suspect that if one were to go back and look at all of the mortality that had Covid as the cause that one would see about 90% ascribed to a concurrent condition as the real cause of death, and that WuFlu (if actually present???) was a minor contributor. One example from the Oregon Heath Authority was a 106 yo woman who was Covid positive for 75 days. Cause of death? Why WuFlu of course. Being 106 was a minor concern. Sheeesh! doesn’t cover it.
its only b/c some blck doctors dont know the difference between
forceps and foreskins
People misunderstand the purpose of such ‘studies’.
These are designed to promote self-segregation. Among black people.
To get black people demanding black doctors, black cops, black scientists, black teachers and on and on.
And then to make giving them what they ask for look virtuous.
So that the black neighborhoods and black schools, black media, black hospitals and black businesses all exist in strict segregation at the behest of black people.
Which places all the white leftists safely away from the DEI degrees and contracts they hand out to show how pure of heart they are.
It gives them back the segregation they were forced to stop in the 60s
And, as the black areas deteriorate, and they will, it might even get them a form of slavery back.
Which is what they’ve been fighting for since Republicans stopped them.
correct and lets add to that the wht leftists need for the poc to attack pro magas with physical violence and then allow all that you post
I’ve always been against segregation. I’m pondering whether to change my opinion. Maybe blacks should only go to black doctors, black lawyers, black accountants, be educated by black teachers, policed by black policeman, be serviced by black banks, and so on. Let the chips fall where they may. They hate us and want segregation then let them have it. Whatever sympathy I once I had for them has evaporated driven by their statements and more importantly their actions.
The Cathedral hollows-out minority communities the same way it does for rural America — poaching the best and brightest and luring them into cities where they can make more money, but have fewer children and be of no service to their communities.
The result is deracinated and deterritorialized bugmen.
Neonatology is the specialty that would care for the extremely low birth weight babies of any racial or cultural background. The breakdown of race in the physicians is:
White 65.6%
Asian 19.9%
Hispanic or Latino 6.4%
Unknown 4.1%
Black or African American 3.8%
American Indian and Alaska Native , 0.2%
https://www.zippia.com/neonatologist-jobs/demographics/
General Pediatrics demographics by race :
White 64.6%
Asian 18.1%
Hispanic or Latino 9.2%
Black or African American 5.2%
Unknown 2.8%
American Indian and Alaska Native 0.1%
Certainly with these numbers the conclusions can be milked for all kinds of agendas. But the bare numbers would seem to say that babies born with normal weights would be 1/3 more likely to be cared for by blacks than low birth weight babies. This alone can explain any differences in survival. Predicted survival is heavily correlated with birth weight.
At 28 weeks’ gestation predicted survival was 63% (56% to 70%) for birth weights of 500-749 g (below the 10th centile) and 90% (87% to 92%) for those of 1250-1499 g. At 32 weeks’ gestation predicted survival was 80% (70% to 88%) for birth weights of 750-999 g and 98% (97% to 99%) for those of 1500-2499 g.
I’m astounded that all of this discussion is based on survival by white physicians of 99.1% and black physicians of 99.6%. I guess I’m not fully astounded in that it is only being thrown out to make political points.
if they include into all this that
wht doctors perform 80..90%? of all abortions and probably that same % with poc as the females then the numbers can really get skewed
kind of like when they add in suicides by gun in with homicides by guns
What’s the survival rate of Jewish children with Palestinian Doctors?
We know that the babies studied were ASSIGNED black at birth. What their true race is, however, remains debatable.
It did not use science AT ALL. It was a sociological study. They’re almost always garbage as they’re poorly structured and fail to eliminate confounding variables.
‘If it can’t be expressed in figures it is not science, it is opinion.’ – paraphrase of Robert Heinlein
Leave a Comment