A researcher who argued that infant mortality is higher for black newborns with white doctors because of racial bias omitted a variable from the paper that “undermines the narrative,” according to the researcher’s internal notes.
The study forms a keystone of the racial concordance field, which hypothesizes patients are better served by medical providers of the same race, and has served as a rationale for affirmative action. It faces new questions just as universities move to defund their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs or face legal action.
The August 2020 study in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) concluded that the gap in mortality rates between black newborns and white newborns declines by 58% if the black newborns are under the care of black physicians. A possible driver of the phenomenon could include a “spontaneous bias”…
