(PatriotWise.com) — In a column in the Wall Street Journal last week, lawyer Ted Frank took apart the “mathematically absurd claim” made by Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in her dissenting opinion in the Court’s affirmative action case.
In her dissent, Jackson attempted to argue for race-based college admissions by claiming that it was vital for universities to churn out “highly educated professionals of color” because lives in “marginalized communities” would be saved.
To back up her assertion, Jackson cited a study that found that black doctors are “more likely to accurately assess” the pain tolerance of black patients to better treat them. She claimed that the study found that the survival rate among black newborns will double if they are treated by a black doctor.
But in his op-ed, Frank calls Justice Jackson’s claim “wildly implausible.” He notes that if the survival rate for black infants is 60 percent, it would be “mathematically impossible” to double it to 120 percent.
Frank points out that the actual survival rate for black newborns is more than 99 percent.
Frank noted that the research Jackson cited in her dissent “makes no such claims.” Instead, the study examines the mortality rates from 1992 to 2015 in Florida. Among black newborns with black doctors, there was a 0.13 percent to 0.2 percent improvement in survival rates while there was “no statistically significant improvement” with black obstetricians.
An improvement of 0.13 to 0.2 percent is not “doubling” the survival of black newborns.
Frank concluded that Justice Jackson was “parroting a mathematically absurd claim” that was made by “an interested party’s mischaracterization of a flawed study.”
He notes that Jackson argued in her dissent that “all of us” should “do what evidence and experts” say is necessary “to level the playing field and march forward together.”
But according to Frank, it would be better to “watch where we’re going.”
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