Our estimate that 85% of all health research is being avoidably “wasted” [Chalmers & Glasziou, 2009] commonly elicits disbelief. Our own first reaction was similar: “that can’t be right?” Not only did 85% sound too much, but given that $200 billion per year is spent globally on health and medical research, it implied an annual waste of $170 billion. That amount ranks somewhere between the GDPs of Kuwait and Hungary. It seems a problem worthy of serious analysis and attention. But how can we estimate the waste?
Black Harvard economics professor wrote a research paper investigating whether racial differences in police shooting rates were the result of “racial bias” or “statistical discrimination”. Statistical discrimination = an individual or institution treats people differently based on data that reflects the average behavior of a racial group. Racial bias = if police pull over black drivers at a rate that disproportionately exceeded their likelihood of drug possession, that would be an irrational behavior representing individual or institutional bias.
Jewish Harvard Health & Human Rights Fellow finds flaws in methodology, but also shows extreme lack of neutrality to social science research! These are two of his opening statements: 1. "There should be no argument that black and Latino people in Houston are much more likely to be shot by police compared to whites." 2. "the idea of “statistical discrimination” is just as abhorrent as “racial bias”."
Methodological flaw one seems valid.
1. pulling people over who are most likely to have done something illegal, and making more arrests is rational behavior by police. It isn't the right approach to shootings though, as police officers are not trying to rationally maximize the number of shootings.
2. flaw two is described as this: actual study assumes a population of people who are shot by police OR people who are arrested. Proper approach is to assume a population of drivers stopped by police that can have one of two outcomes: they can be arrested, or not. This is a less valid criticism, because "proper approach" doesn't even have shooting as an outcome! Finding is that of the two groups (shot OR arrested), racial disparity in arrest rates is larger than the racial disparity in police shooting.