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Comment by Jordrok | Hacker News Reader

You are heavily, heavily overreacting here. Take a breath.

If he were wrong, you'd have been able to formulate a better response than tone policing.

How's this for an argument: hyper-fixating on the word "race" in this context completely derails productive conversations about the importance of testing medical devices on a diverse range of subjects and instead turns it into yet another stupid culture war. Would the article have been substantially different if the phrase "skin color bias" had been substituted for "racial bias"? No! Absolutely not! So let's all calm the fuck down and stop getting so bent out of shape that someone had the audacity to use the 'r' word!

That's a bit better, but "productive conversation" is subjective. His comment drives the conversation in a direction other than the one you prefer, but that is merely your preference.

Ok, and I would argue that anyone who values the second topic over the first has their priorities seriously out of whack and needs to do some soul searching.

I don't think it's an over-reaction at all. Racial inequality is a hot topic, as well it should be -- it's a given that media outlets will use hot topics as a means to make money; the problem here is that brewing up anger over a supposed racial bias is entirely incorrect and potentially damning for no good reason.

Little effort is needed to provoke outrage about racial discrimination, I think that it's up to good citizens, particularly journalists or those with a 'loud voice' to make sure that they don't stir the pot and create unneeded tensions and hatred for no good reason other than more clicks.

It would take a lot to make me believe that the wording wasn't purposeful.

Who exactly is brewing up anger here? The only people I see getting angry are the ones in these comments who are so easily triggered by the word "race".

I consider it valid criticism. It does not need to be a racial issue.

When I was growing up, I was one of the few white kids in my circle of friends. One of the kids was always beating his chest on how the white man is keeping the brown man down. This is exactly the type of nonsense he would bring up.

The pulse oximeter wasn't purposely designed to give false readings to darker people.

The pulse oximeter was apparently not properly tested or calibrated on dark skinned people, despite being a widely used medical device. You don't see evidence of bias there, when people with darker skin are an afterthought?

> You don't see evidence of bias there, when people with darker skin are an afterthought?

I see a bias. However, maybe the testing was done only on poor white people because that's what the testing company employed (due to operating in a poor country with no significant "coloured" people population). Everybody wants to save money. Test results almost do not matter if the test is "done". Especially when "best practice" comes from SW.

This is the entire point of the article - that inadequate testing can lead to inaccurate results. The point isn't that "the device is biased and therefore its makers are bad people", it's to highlight a clear-cut case where cutting costs by doing such limited testing leads to negative outcomes.

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