Bigotry and intolerance are fundamentally irrational and illogical, so the so-called "left-bias" of science is just science being itself.
Now the comments in this HN page and the reason.com article are completely ignoring that, and only considering everything through a political filter.
Like what the skin color has to do with how good your physician is? Nothing.
Science is smart enough to propose the adequate metrics, in this case it does absolutely not include melanin.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. Malpractice and disciplinary rates among Black and Latin physicians are higher: https://www.library.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Medica...
> After controlling for a number of other variables, Latino/a and Black physicians were both more likely to receive complaints and more likely to see those complaints escalate to investigations. Latino/a physicians were also more likely to see those investigations result in disciplinary outcomes. On the other hand, some other minority physicians — in particular Asian physicians — actually saw reduced likelihoods of receiving complaints, or of those complaints escalating to investigations. These observations remained even after controlling for age, gender, board certification, and number of hours spent on patient care.
Similarly, there is a body of scholarship that suggests that black physicians trust black patients more than white physicians trust black patients. If I am black, does the color of my physician matter when I talk about something hurting? The evidence suggests that it might.
The fundamental flaw in basing your moral philosophy in measurable metrics is that metrics are noisy and that noise will often undermine your point. Instead, you should be making a purely moral point: my doctor’s skin color shouldn't matter and I will act to make the world I live in more similar to this ideal. That moral point is the driving force behind the civil rights progress that has been made.
Why would we expect this trend to replicate across countries which have different medical training systems?
Your point is to use a proxy for the variable that really matters.
Unfortunately that proxy is neither reliable, nor has good impact on the society in general.
It is better to just use the pertinent variables directly without a proxy.
Your physician is good if e.g. they have also a research formation, if their patients are satisfied and have a good recovering rate for illnesses that promise recovery, etc.
PS: ok, I see that you also point to variable trust from the patient to the physician based on superficial criteria. I hope that can change in the near future when everybody has the mindset "the appearance is not what matters". The patients themselves will benefit from growing their openmindedness.
Of course, that logic doesn't work because convictions for crime is a pretty good proxy. If I want to discredit it, I'd have to actually explain why convictions for violent crime don't correspond to the true crime rates. If you have cause to think that malpractice lawsuits and disciplinary actions are not a good proxy for poorly administered medical care, I'm all ears.