Lead author omitted data that ‘undermines the narrative’
A study that claimed black newborn babies perform better when cared for by black doctors has been cited nearly 800 times in medical literature, according to a review by medical reform group Do No Harm.
The report looks at a widely cited study called “Physician-patient racial concordance and disparities in birthing mortality for newborns,” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Though the results have been called into question since the researchers did not control for birth weight, it has still been cited at least 786 times according to Do No Harm’s new report. Justice Ketanji Jackson also misquoted the study in her dissent in the 2023 Supreme Court case which prohibited affirmative action in higher education.
Proponents of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” initiatives have cited this study to argue for privileging racial minorities for medical school. Do No Harm has previously released a different report debunking racial concordance.
The chairman of Do No Harm provided further insights into this issue via a media statement to The College Fix.
“Medicine is continually evolving and physicians need to follow the medical literature to understand the latest treatments” Dr. Stanley Goldfarb told The Fix in response to an email inquiry. “When we have flawed studies[…] we can undermine the entire medical establishment,” Goldfarb, a trained nephrologist and former associate dean at the University of Pennsylvania’s medical school, told The Fix.
Goldfarb said physicians need to be “properly trained in the evaluation of the medical literature.”
Second, “we need medical scientists to speak out once such flawed information is presented,” he stated, in response to a question about how to prevent similar problems in the future.
Additionally, those who work in the media should “seek out Independent experts to review the information and to comment on it rather than to seek to maintain a particular narrative” to ensure accuracy.
The Fix reached out to all four researchers on the paper, but only one responded. Harvard University business school Professor Laura Huang deferred to the main author, Brad Greenwood, in response to questions. Other co-authors Rachel Hardeman and Aaron Sojourner did not respond to requests for comment. Hardeman is an advocate for using critical race theory in medicine but recently left the University of Minnesota following pushback against her management of an “antiracism” center and allegations of plagiarism.
Greenwood did not respond to an inquiry sent in the past week from The Fix asking for a response to the report and other criticisms of the study’s design.
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Do No Harm previously obtained documents relating to this study where Greenwood said he left out a certain data point which showed white babies did worse with black physicians because it “undermines the narrative.”
The documents found the original PNAS paper stated “[w]hite newborns experience 80 deaths per 100,000 births more with a black physician than an white physician, implying a 22% fatality reduction from racial concordance.” Greenwood, the lead author of the study, wrote in the margin that he would rather “not focus” on the statistic. “If we’re telling the story from the perspective of saving black infants” he wrote, “this undermines the narrative[.]”
Experts from the Manhattan Institute and Harvard University also challenged the claims of the study and pointed out the researchers did not control for birth weight.
Researchers George Borjas, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, and Robert VerBruggen, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, replicated the research while accounting for birth weight. Their paper, “Physician-patient racial concordance and newborn mortality,” published by PNAS in September 2024, found that “[t]he estimated racial concordance effect is substantially weakened, and often becomes statistically insignificant.”
The academic journal that published the paper declined to comment but instead deferred to a 2024 commentary from Theodore Joyce which examined the controversy. He is a healthcare economist at Baruch College.
In his analysis of the initial study, Joyce points out that the missing control for low birth weight was not discovered in the peer-review process due to several factors, including limited access to the data and programs in the reviewing process, the belief that the researchers provided enough controls, and simply that the study was published two months after George Floyd’s death. “Reviewers are only human,” Joyce wrote, “and these events may have affected how the results were interpreted.”
Joyce also reviewed the email exchanges between Borjas, VerBruggen, and Greenwood regarding their studies. Joyce reports being “moved by the collegiality and support Greenwood displayed for the direction Borjas and VerBruggen were headed in reproducing the results in GHHS and then refuting the key conclusions.”
Joyce points out that “[r]arely does one study prove definitive and it’s only through reproduction and replication that knowledge advances.”
He also noted the researchers did control for 65 other variables.
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IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: A black baby smiles; Art Photo/Shutterstock
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