Date published: 2007/05/03
The BBC says:
Women's better bedside manner makes them more likely than men to pass medical exams, a study suggests.
The UK study showed women had the edge over men generally because they were better at communicating with patients and examining them in clinical tests.
The research which looked at gender and racial factors in exams taken by 3,650 candidates also suggested non-white males do least well in these exams.
More white candidates - 75.5% - passed compared to 60.3% of non-whites.
The research looked at candidates taking the MRCP (UK) exam that junior doctors have to pass to become specialist physicians. The study was into the 2003-04 year group.
It was carried out by a team of senior researchers from University College London and led by Dr Neil Dewhurst, the medical director of the examination department of the UK's colleges of physicians which runs the exam.
...
[ Dewhurst ] said he thought the reason for the non-whites' lower performance was a problem with the way they were being assessed rather than their overall ability."It may be that we are not be measuring these doctors correctly rather than saying their performance across the board is sub-optimal," he added.
As a result the colleges would look at changing the way some of its assessments were carried out, he added.
Of course, any research these days that shows men are better at anything compared with women means that the procedure is biased against women, and that in reality women are just as good as men. But any research that shows that women are better than men means that women are just better than men.
And similarly, any research that shows that whites are better than non-whites means the procedure is biased against the non-whites. And no doubt any research that shows non-whites are better at anything compared with whites means that non-whites are just better than whites.
This is why Dewhurst can apparently conclude, with a straight face, that his study proves that women are better than men, but that the assessment was biased against non-whites. ("Category A did better than Category B so A is better than B. Category C did better than Category D so the assessment is biased against D, and in reality C is no better than D.")
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