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Comment by DuckHuntMaster | Hacker News Reader

There is a lot of assumptions made in this article, and it's interesting that we never see publications on the superior performance of male surgeons ETC. I guess those facts would be offensive to some though.

Here is the most likely reason for this statistic. (Of you can call it that since it is objectively statistically insignificant, being that male doctors treated 150X more women overall).

The male doctors are better doctors (all factors such as age and experience being the same), and its well documented that they can handle higher stress levels and make Less emotionally influenced mistakes. So they get the tougher cases to begin with. This is a plausible of an argument as any in the article or mentioned here.

Is funny that those who fight gender biases the most are some of the most biased.

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So they get the tougher cases to begin with.

Do you have evidence that this happens in the ER? When my wife did her ER rotation it wasn't like this.

We have a study that shows women with heart attacks do worse in ERs unless they are treated by a female doctor. You are presenting facts (without attribution) about surgeons. ER doctors are not surgeons. So what evidence do you have from the ER that contradicts the apparent conclusion of the study?

Is funny that those who fight gender biases the most are some of the most biased.

It's quite ironic that you wrote the above sentence given your post. The only evidence you provide is about surgeons and conclude that male superiority in medicine is the most likely reason for the statistics in the study. That is quite a stretch there.

Thanks, it's meant to be ironic. There are only guesses all around based on a numbers with a similar ratio of 5 cases for women physicians and 700 for men. How can this be considered serious reporting? If the numbers favored men, we wouldn't be having this conversation for a number of reasons.

There hasn't been thousands of years of gender bias in favor of women so it's expected that results that show men are better than women in some areas are not necessarily newsworthy. Sometimes such results are newsworthy.

You miss my point. No statistician worth his salt would ever consider these numbers relevant, Yet here it it's all over the news. Why the over compensation for women? A whole story making women out to be superior to men in some way with trash to back it up. Why? If women are capable, give them props. Don't make up stuff based on horrible data.

If the numbers favored men, we wouldn't be having this conversation for a number of reasons.

I think you missed my point. I was responding solely to the above quote that you made.

>So [men] get the tougher cases to begin with.

This argument has come up several times here as though it is an obvious possibility, but I have significant reason to doubt it.

In politics, it is known that women end up being given statistically riskier elections to defend - i.e. those that are the most critical ones for a political party, while also offering individuals less secure career prospects.

Why, then, is it assumed that the exact opposite must be true in medicine?

How can we begin comparing political strategy to sub minute life and death medical decisions? I am confused, or missing your point.

“And its well documented that they can handle higher stress levels and make Less emotionally influenced mistakes.”

Can we see some of this documentation, please?

There have been countless studies. Mostly by the military. Google it. Of course those studies were all biased so I can't expect you to believe them.

Since you are making the assertion that this is well documented, surely you would be able to provide links on your own? I’m interested in what evidence you are basing your argument on.

What do you think will come from your posting this here? I know men are stereotypically more prone to taking action that has an uncertain payoff, but this is (if I may be so bold) ridiculous.

Its completely relevant and my original guess explaining this unlikely variance may actually be factual. The stress coping capabilities of a physician is one of the largest predictors of proper patient treatment in the ER

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17701593.

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