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BECAUSE IT HELPED ESTABLISH A DESIRED NARRATIVE. NEXT QUESTION? Why did it take four years to debunk the black baby study?

A study published this week in the prestigious journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, makes a claim nearly unheard of in leading medical journals: Systemic racism and implicit bias are not the obvious explanations for pervasive racial disparities. Specifically, black newborns are not more likely to die when treated by white doctors.

The study, by a Harvard economist and a Manhattan Institute researcher, purports to debunk a much-discussed 2020 study, also published in PNAS, that concluded that black newborns treated by white doctors receive a “death penalty,” twice as likely to die. That study garnered damning headlines in USA Today, CNN, Science News, NPR and The Washington Post. It was also so influential that it was cited by Chief Justice Brown Jackson in the 2023 Supreme Court case on affirmative action, in which the American Medical Association and 44 other parties stated in their amicus brief, “For high-risk black newborns, having a black doctor is akin to a panacea.”

How could two research teams look at the same data – 1.8 million births in Florida between 1992 and 2015 – and come to diametrically opposed conclusions?

This time, the researchers added one key variable that the 2020 researchers missed — low birth weights — and the whole thing came crashing down. The study design contained a fatal flaw, ignoring the fact that severely underweight babies, who have very high mortality rates to begin with, are often treated by white doctors. Doctors who treat the most serious medical cases tend to see higher mortality rates.

That doesn’t matter, the story is firmly anchored.