"Let me preface what I'm about to say with this: I view all races as equal." "But this chart explains why I personally would never willingly allow a hispanic or black doctor to practice medicine on me." (np.reddit.com)
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82 ups - 41 downs = 41 votes
101 comments submitted at 07:29:22 on Jun 16, 2014 by 75000_Tokkul
The guy sounds like a racist, but you have to admit he has a point.
Hey I didnt know we were having a "rasterizedlines impersonation" contest today.
This comment has my vote.
That one comment kept me entertained all morning.
rasterizedlines was definitely not the first. Does nobody remember SweedishMeatballs?!
Not really because they still have to pass the same things in medical school that everyone else does.
Right, but just because two people both pass something doesn't mean that they are both equally competent.
Yeah but they are both competent enough to get through medical school and get hired as a doctor. Anything else is just guessing at how good they may be.
Edit: Also going from the statistics I should refuse any doctor who isn't asian or an "other race".
I'm only going off what that person said and I don't know how true it is, but if it's true the bar is lowered for minorities then statistically your chances are going to be better with a white doctor.
Yes they may both be competent because they passed, but one is still more likely to be better than the other.
As for your asian comment I'm not sure what you mean, I'm not saying anyone should refuse a minority doctor. I certainly wouldn't. I'm just saying the guy makes an interesting point, despite sounding like he has some kind of agenda.
You're not understanding regardless of entrance qualifications if Black med student A and White med student B went to the same medical school, and both graduated, then they both received the same quality of medical education at that point and both managed to pass the requirements. They are both equally apt doctors. Even if a person graduates at the bottom of their class they were still intelligent enough to graduate 3 times and I'd imagine that a medical school isn't just throwing out doctorates.
People in the thread are making the same assumption you are that just because a student is black he had an easier time getting in and therefore is inferior, and it's disrespectful to the student who worked hard enough to be there. It's foolish to think that lowered entrance into med school, not even residency would produce any drastically different results for the quality of doctors of different races, especially considering as I said they had to go through the same process. Show me some statistics that support the idea that minority doctors perform any worse at their job than their white counterparts.
> They are both equally apt doctors.
No, this is where I don't agree. Two people who leave medical school with the same training aren't necessarily equally apt. Some doctors are just better than others. If there are two groups accepted into the school, minorities and whites, and the whites are held to a higher standard when it comes to getting into the school, then statistically the whites are more likely to have better doctors.
> If there are two groups accepted into the school, minorities and whites, and the whites are held to a higher standard when it comes to getting into the school, then statistically the whites are more likely to have better doctors.
If minorities have lower test scores on entering the school for external reasons (which stop being relevant after they are accepted) then you'd expect them to end up being better doctors after graduation.
In other words, if blacks are statistically more likely to attend shitty schools, then a black student with a GPA of 3.5 is likely to be much brighter than a white student with the same GPA, and will catch up and get ahead over the next eight years or how long medical education takes.
> if blacks are statistically more likely to attend shitty schools, then a black student with a GPA of 3.5 is likely to be much brighter than a white student with the same GPA
Good point I hadn't considered this. I've had a fun morning arguing with people but you are the only person that has said anything worth reading.
Thank you.
Unfortunately a lot of people have a knee-jerk reaction to such discussions, because of who usually asks such questions, and also often because they don't know the answer but want to believe that it exists (because helping disadvantaged minorities is good and the world would be a dark and scary place if doing something good like that turned out to produce the opposite effect).
Generally I think that maybe it would be better to try and offer financial assistance to poor students to get better tutoring and stuff, to better prepare for admission exams (and put more emphasis on those), etc. It would fix a shitton of problems. On the other hand, with high enough drop out rates, the first few years of college can be thought of doing pretty much the same thing and that sort of works, so...
The reason why they have lower scores is irrelevant (at least in this context... it's still a problem that needs to be fixed).
>then a black student with a GPA of 3.5 is likely to be much brighter than a white student with the same GPA,
Except you aren't comparing two people with a 3.5 GPA. You're comparing one with a 4.0, and one with a 3.5
Go away, "StrawRedditor", u srs false flag. Both of your objections are too dumb to be real.
If you're basing your assumption of competence strictly on college GPA and MCAT scores (which is what the post is about), why not just let a first year med student operate on you? Otherwise, why are you assuming different levels of professional competence based solely on entry scores?
> Otherwise, why are you assuming different levels of professional competence based solely on entry scores?
I'm not. I'm saying it's a factor. I even italicized 'more likely' so nobody would make this mistake.
While there's evidence that MCAT scores partially predict a student's scores in the first two years of med school, I've seen no research that supports that MCAT scores predict professional performance as doctors, so I don't even think we can say more likely because there's nothing to logically support that conclusion.
You keep saying
> the whites are held to a higher standard when it comes to getting into the school, then statistically the whites are more likely to have better doctors.
Which is a fallacy, since you don't realize that entrance exams have no bearing at all on the end results, and the quality of medical education. No matter black, white, yellow, muppet or translucent, perfect or lowest score on the MCAT, does not mean shit to your teachers. At the end of the day if you show that you are able to get through medical school with a high enough grade to graduate then you have shown that you at least have the capability to be a satisfactory doctor, and any differences in quality of healthcare comes down to individual discretion, not race or how hard you had to work to get into medical school 10+ years ago. So for the final time I will ask you,
> Show me some statistics that support the idea that minority doctors perform any worse at their job than their white counterparts.
> Which is a fallacy, since you don't realize that entrance exams have no bearing at all on the end results
If this was true then medical schools wouldn't accept people based on the entrance exams.
> Show me some statistics that support the idea that minority doctors perform any worse at their job than their white counterparts.
I haven't claimed this , I'm not saying they are definitely worse, I'm saying the dude had a point I hadn't thought of before. That statistically you have an advantage with white doctors if the bar is set higher for their entry. I'm not saying the advantage is even necessarily worth considering. Personally I couldn't give a shit who looked after me so long as they were qualified.
>If this was true then medical schools wouldn't accept people based on the entrance exams.
Bullshit. Someone who got top scores could slack off during medical school or develop personal issues that result in them barely graduating, while someone who got lower scores might work their asses off through med school and graduate top of their class. You cannot possibly know where they ended up in graduation based on their entrance scores; all the entrance scores tell you is that they had a minimum level of competency. And the entrance exams don't tell you anything about how skilled a doctor is after 15 years of practice.
Would you rather have someone who passed with 100% in everything? Or someone who passed with an 80? what about a 70?
I'd care more about how the doctor did over the past x years rather than the percentile placed on an entrance exam taken 10+ years ago. If the doctor has done well over the past years with patients seen then why would I care if the doctor was perfect going into medical school?
I think most people would too... but unfortunately, we don't really have statistics (at least not on hand) that show how well doctors did by race over the past X years. So the OP is assuming that "Better MCAT scores" will tend to = "doing better over the past X years" and then making that judgement.
It turns out there's actually not a really strong correlation between the two... but it's not like it's that unreasonable of an assumption to make without looking further into it.
> The guy sounds like a racist, but you have to admit he has a point.
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> I'm only going off what that person said and I don't know how true it is, but if it's true the bar is lowered for minorities then statistically your chances are going to be better with a white doctor.
That's how little it takes, folks.
Is it not true that the bar is lowered for minorities? If so I agree he is completely wrong. Nobody seems to have disputed that though. I'm not from the US so this is not something I would know, there's no need to be condescending.
Who would you rather have as a doctor: the person that started at home and ran 3 bases or the person that started at third and thinks they hit a home run?
If people are going to judge purely from those statistics then you should refuse white doctors also because Asians score higher.
I don't know who is talking about refusing anyone here. However, if statistically Asians score higher then yes of course your best bet is going to be with an Asian doctor. I'm not sure what your point is.
The guy this thread is about says he would never willingly allow a black or Hispanic doctor to work on him. I'm just pointing out that by those statistics you should refuse white doctors as well and go with Asians.
Why stop there? Might as well just demand you get the best doctor in your country - scratch that- the best doctor in the whole world. Just fly him in from whatever he's from (probably a proud aryan nation). Might as well play it safe and get the best medical aid possible, right? I wouldn't trust anyone but the best. If he happens to be white (which is true because heavily misinterpreted statistics said so) then so be it.
> you should refuse white doctors
Sorry, I thought by this you meant me specifically. I think it's natural to seek out the best medical care with the information you have available, but to outright refuse a race becomes a problem. I mean obviously not all black doctors are worse than all white ones etc.
"To outright refuse a race becomes a problem"
That is the whole point of this post.
EVeryone would have their own threshold.
Maybe he doesn't care about an MCAT difference of 0.2, but one of 2.0 would be significant enough.
That's illogical though, if you care about score then you would want the top scoring.
sure. It merely means that they are both sufficiently competent and capable of doing the exact same things. So stop uncritically accepting shit because it sounds good to you even though it comes from an obvious racist, as you admit. Block out scum, and your mind clears up beautifully.
Look, just because someone sounds like a racist doesn't mean they haven't made a valid point. What you're suggesting is sticking our fingers in our ears.
Two people can both pass an exam, be competent, but one be better than another. Let's not try and pretend this isn't true just because it is uncomfortable.
A racist can make a valid point on baking cookies, painting a room, and many other things. It's when they say something that relates to sociology that you have to take it with a grain of salt. And by that I mean it's just slightly less likely to make sense than a monkey chained to a typing machine.
Well how in this case did it not make sense? I'm open to having my mind changed here believe me, I'm not comfortable agreeing with a racist, but for now nobody has countered his point, just down voted me or said 'well yeah he's racist so it's wrong'
Lowering entry requirements is not the same thing as lowering graduation standards. It's essentially the schools saying that they believe certain groups of people are disproportionally disadvantaged but not disproportionately unqualified to become doctors.
ok, and I completely understand the reasoning behind it and why it is done. However, just because it is not the minorities fault they have a low GPA (it could be that schools in those areas are much worse than others) it makes no difference, the end result is the same.
I am not saying I would care who treated me so long as they had passed medical school, I was just pointing out the guy raised an interesting point that I had never thought of before.
Basically it's absurd because the guy is basing who he wants treating him on national averages of acceptance into med school broken down by race.
Now as I see it there are really two main reasons people go to the doctor: they have something mundane wrong with them like pneumonia or a broken arm that anyone who graduated med school can treat, or they have something serious and complicated that requires a specialist.
In scenario one it doesn't matter who treats you so long as they have a license to practice medicine.
In scenario two you're going to do a ton of research into choosing a doctor to find the top doc you can afford. That research will be concerned with experience, recommendations from other physicians, reputation, etc. You're not going to be concerned with his grades on the mcat, because it doesn't tell you shit about what you need to know.
Basically if you're going to a doctor about something you think requires expertise, you owe it to yourself to do a little more legwork than making assumptions about your physician's race.
There are different levels of passing.
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