Earlier this year, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji  Brown Jackson objected to the majority's finding that it is unconstitutional to use racial preferences in college admissions.

When writing her dissent, Jackson cited a brief submitted by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). Yet as researcher Jay P. Greene recently pointed out, it contained errors that suggest a disaster is coming in medical education. 

Brief's claim was "mathematically impossible"

"In her Students for Fair Admissions dissent, she asserted that matching Black physicians with Black patients doubles survival rates for newborns, a claim that’s equally unbelievable and factually unsupported," Greene wrote in an article for Fox News.

Indeed, attorney Ted Frank debunked Jackson's claim in an earlier op-ed piece published by the Wall Street Journal last month.

"A moment’s thought should be enough to realize that this claim is wildly implausible. Imagine if 40% of black newborns died—thousands of dead infants every week," the lawyer pointed out.

"But even so, that’s a 60% survival rate, which is mathematically impossible to double. And the actual survival rate is over 99%," Frank stressed before asking, "How could Justice Jackson make such an innumerate mistake?"

Jackson pointed to a 2020 study from George Mason University School of Business professor Brad Greenwood which was included in the AAMC amicus brief.

Brief contained a second error

However Frank retorted that "[t]he study makes no such claims," declaring, "The AAMC brief either misunderstood the paper or invented the statistic."

What's more, Greene stressed that "this is not the only mistake Jackson made" as the justice made another claim based on the AAMC amicus brief, "the same source that led to Jackson’s first mistake."

The justice wrote, "[R]esearch shows that Black physicians are more likely to accurately assess Black patients’ pain tolerance and treat them accordingly," such as by "prescribing them appropriate amounts of pain medication."

"The AAMC brief refers to four studies in support of this claim. Yet none of them examine whether Black doctors are better at treating the pain of Black patients," Greene pointed out.

AAMC allowing ideology to threaten "future medical care"

"All four document Black patients’ problems with pain management, but crucially, not one examines the efficacy of doctors of different races. The AAMC either failed to read the research or deliberately created this claim out of whole cloth," he complained.

"The AAMC’s actions are lowering, not raising, the quality of medical education, which in turn lowers the quality of future medical care," Greene wrote as he drew to a close.

Further, he asserted that Jackson has inadvertently "shined a light on the deeper danger that DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] poses to Americans’ health and well-being."