Justice Jackson Accused Of Second Glaring False Claim In Affirmative Action Dissent
BY TYLER DURDEN
MONDAY, JUL 31, 2023 - 03:25 PM
Authored by Jonathan Turley,
We previously discussed how Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson included a false claim to support her dissent in the Court’s recent opinion barring racial discrimination in college admissions. Now, the justice is accused of a second false claim derived from the same source: the amicus brief of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).
Notably, however, the media is still citing the first error as proof that race-blind admissions will kill Black citizens.
In her prior error, Jackson claimed that affirmative action has been shown to “save lives” by allowing black doctors to give better care for black people than white doctors.
“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.”
Experts immediately objected that the claim was wildly off base. AAMC later asked the Court to correct the claim, though many objected that it still did not fully address the scope of the false claim. Ted Frank who previously noted that the study itself was flawed in relying on a linear regression given the small group analysis. He responded to the correction on Twitter by noting:
“The particular specification the authors and AAMC highlight fails to account for the fact that black doctors are much less likely to be neonatologists, who get the higher risk cases. The number is much smaller when there’s a partial attempt to control for this. And, as the op-ed noted, the logit model hidden in the back of the appendix found that black doctors had a higher mortality rate overall. The study is not grounds for racial discrimination, and the paper doesn’t dare to claim that skin color saves lives.”
I will leave these details to those with a better statistical handle on these studies.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/justice-jackson-accused-second-glaring-false-claim-affirmative-action-dissent