Do Not Take Medical Advice from Charles Murray

In a recent tweet, Charles Murray wrote, "the rational way to choose a physician is to take the East Asian or South Asian first, or a person with a Jewish last name. Not racist, but a matter of correctly playing the odds of getting competent care." Likely because those groups score higher than whites on IQ tests, with Jews leading the way, having IQs roughly 11 points higher than whites, assuming Murray means Brahmin Caste for South Asian.

But physicians are not randomly selected from populations.

Except for blacks and other affirmative action cases, they come from narrow, homogenous IQ sub-groups--smart people. We should not assume Jewish doctors are much smarter than white doctors. The mean IQs of Jewish and white physicians should be nearly identical because the white population is at least 25 times larger than the Jewish population despite Jews having a roughly 11 point larger mean IQ on tests.

The mean GPA of 2015-2016 medical school applicants labeled white is 3.73, that of applicants labeled Asian: 3.73. (The stats likely count people of North African and Southwest Asian descent as white. The stats do not separate Northeast Asians, Brahmin Caste Indians, and other Asians.)

That's not counting rampant cheating done by non-whites. In Asia, students riot and launch lawsuits if they are not permitted to cheat, on the grounds that it is an unfair disadvantage to not be permitted to cheat when their co-ethnics cheat. They cheat in classrooms, and they hire allies to take standardized tests for them.

But medical competence is more than IQ. Whites are higher in compassion, including for other whites, while nonwhites often regard whites as merely a means to their own ends. Whites are also more able to face facts that conflict with self-interest, more able to experience guilt for mistakes and correct those mistakes. See Peter Frost's blog for research on character traits.

For decades, Brahmin orthopedic surgeons more eagerly recommended articular cartilage shaving surgeries to patients, though the surgeries made knees worse because they cared more about making money than facing facts. They did not care when patients complained their knees were worse than before surgeries. They continue to prescribe fish oil despite well-reasoned research contradicting fish oil for cardiovascular health. There are powerful genetic and environmental reasons why India has had a vicious caste system for thousands of years.

In the absence of other specific evidence, choose white doctors first, Northeast Asians second, other non-black doctors third, and black doctors last.

(By the way, Murray's Libertarian economic ideas are even more poorly reasoned.)