Slashdot Mirror


Women Die More From Heart Attacks Than Men -- Unless the ER Doc Is Female (scientificamerican.com)

Women who suffer from heart attacks may be at a higher risk of death in the emergency room if they see a male physician rather than a female one, a new study suggests. The study doesn't jump to conclusions, but doctors and cardiologists have a few theories. There could be a systematic bias where male physicians are not listening to female patients' complaints as readily as [those of] a man, or there could be a bias that favors men in the medical literature, leading to misdiagnoses in women. It may also be that female doctors do a better job than their male counterparts. "In the new study everyone was more likely to survive if they saw a female physician, and a study published last year [...] indicated all patients of female physicians had lower mortality and hospital readmission rates," reports Scientific American. From the report: Heart disease is the number-one killer of both men and women, but the latter are significantly less likely to survive heart attacks. According to 2016 American Heart Association statement, 26 percent of women will die within a year of a heart attack compared with just 19 percent of men. The gap widens with time: By five years after a heart attack almost half of women die, compared with 36 percent of men. The reason has eluded researchers for years, but the authors of the new study point to the disparity in male and female representation in emergency doctors as a potential source of answers. The researchers analyzed a Florida Agency for Health Care Administration database containing every heart attack case from every ER in the state (excluding Veterans Affairs hospitals) between 1991 and 2010.

The researchers divided 500,000-plus cases into four categories: male doctors treating men; male doctors treating women; female doctors treating men; and female doctors treating women. "All of those are statistically indistinguishable except for male doctor -- female patient," says Brad Greenwood, an author on the study and a data scientist at the University of Minnesota. If a heart attack patient is a woman and her emergency physician is a man, he says, her risk of death suddenly rises by about 12 percent. Put another way, a heart attack patient dies in the ER about 11.9 percent of the time overall -- but the research team found women with heart attacks will die about 12.4 percent of the time if their cases are handled by male doctors. This means approximately one out of every 66 women with heart attacks dies in the emergency room if she sees a male doctor rather than a female one.

275 comments

  1. Coud be that women lie more to male doctors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Same way men will lie about their problems so as not to appear lesser. Nothing says women don't have pride.

    1. Re:Coud be that women lie more to male doctors by arth1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm not sure that's the cause. The study also shows that male doctors with more experience with female patients have a better outcome than male doctors with less experience with female patients.
      There are things women and men might lie about or unconsciously "adjust" in different ways. If you had a non-obese patient, the male might claim he weighs a little more than he does, and a woman might claim she weighs a little less than she does. But in a hospital setting, I'm sure they do actual measurements instead of relying on the patient.

      But you may have touched upon a potential factor here: communication. It may be, for example, that female patients are less good at volunteering the important information, and that female doctors and male doctors with experience treating females have less problems communicating in a way where the female patient tells important things. Which may include things that a female patient may be uncomfortable disclosing to a young male, like also having an UTI, yeast infection, irregular periods or copper implant. And a younger male doctor may be more uncomfortable with and less good at getting this information, perhaps expecting "any other problems?" to cover that. A doctor that's experienced with either being a women or treating female patients may just be better at asking direct questions.

    2. Re: Coud be that women lie more to male doctors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Maybe itâ(TM)s because male doctors fear sexual assault lawsuits, preventing prompt treatment if they touch female patients.

      https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/11/14/women-will-consent-to-life-saving-first-aid-teitel.html

      https://japantoday.com/category/national/man-revives-woman-with-aed-but-branded-pervert-for-removing-her-clothes-to-apply-electrode-pads

    3. Re:Coud be that women lie more to male doctors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or it could be that feminist women have a hard time listening to male doctors. After all, how could a man know anything about her body, right?

    4. Re:Coud be that women lie more to male doctors by Jessica+Trent · · Score: 1

      Very strange statistics, I think that it is impossible to say exactly how many people are sick with something on the planet. Some people may never go to the doctor in their life, and it may be that they have never heard of it before.

    5. Re: Coud be that women lie more to male doctors by cayenne8 · · Score: 1
      Well, I believe there are still more women than men in the world, so the numbers will even out eventually in the grand scheme of things....

      ;)

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    6. Re:Coud be that women lie more to male doctors by cayenne8 · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Actually, as I understand it.....womens' heart attack symptoms are often VERY different than mens' heart attack symptoms.

      Often with women, the symptoms are very subtle, not the overt chest pressure and discomfort that men readily feel and will know is a problem.

      I'm guessing that female doctors are likely more in tune with women and can sense what's going on a bit better than men can.....

      That might be part of it.....

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    7. Re:Coud be that women lie more to male doctors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Modern doctors are not taught how to communicate with their patients. They are taught that the patient lies. Therefore, focus on interpreting what the patient says, rather than what they actually say.

      Further, if a patient has symptom "X", and 90% of the time that means condition A, then assume condition A, and don't worry about any other possibilities, unless you've eliminated condition A categorically.

    8. Re:Coud be that women lie more to male doctors by BigDukeSix · · Score: 2

      This effect is probably on the doctor side, not the patient side. There is emerging evidence that female surgeons have better outcomes than male surgeons, for operations done on either gender.

    9. Re:Coud be that women lie more to male doctors by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      I would word it more to the fact that the dynamic between same gender doctors vs different gender doctors may be an issue.
      The difference may more be in the interaction vs the differences between different genders.

      A Male with a Male doctor will be more honest with pain levels and explaining the issues. vs with a Male Patient with a Female doctor who may instinctive want to appear tougher then he really feels.

      Normally when a man goes into a hospital they actually get extra attention because they will often go when the condition is too serious, and nearly too late.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    10. Re:Coud be that women lie more to male doctors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Everybody lies." - Dr. Gregory House M.D.

    11. Re:Coud be that women lie more to male doctors by nitehawk214 · · Score: 0, Troll

      The study also shows that male doctors with more experience with female patients have a better outcome than male doctors with less experience with female patients.

      Doctors with more experience have better outcomes than doctors with less experience?

      I am shocked, shocked to find that experience matters.

      --
      I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
    12. Re:Coud be that women lie more to male doctors by BigDukeSix · · Score: 1

      Your example isn't simplistic, it's inane. No scientist would ever use the term "strong evidence" to describe a single correlation. Also, I teach physicians for a living. Rest assured my understanding of this topic is nuanced. Frankly, comments like yours- offtopic, insulting, adding nothing while trying to elevate your own internal sense of intelligence by bringing down someone else- drive away people who are actually in a position to add to the discussion. Please grow up.

    13. Re: Coud be that women lie more to male doctors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or it could just be that the top doctors who get the more difficult operations with a inherently lower chance of success are male.

    14. Re:Coud be that women lie more to male doctors by ausekilis · · Score: 2

      I remember reading somewhere that some conditions - particularly heart attacks - present differently between men and women. We typically think of chest pain and burning around the upper-left chest and shoulder area with a heart attack. Symptoms in women are often that and more - they might experience jaw/back pain, nausea and shortness of breath. Things that could be confused with a common cold or flu pretty easily.

      It's the docs job to know the symptoms and correlate, they can't help much if they don't know the whole picture.

    15. Re:Coud be that women lie more to male doctors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's never lupus.

    16. Re:Coud be that women lie more to male doctors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Its never lupus." - Dr. Gregory House M.D.

    17. Re: Coud be that women lie more to male doctors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Clearly not. That would be too sensible. As soon as you identify a difference between men and women, you must check:

      If it's the favour of women - it's because women are wonderful and men are awful

      If it's in the favour of men - it's systemic sexism against wonderful women by awful men

      That is all. Any disagreement will be labelled as sexism, bigotry and result in banning from all social media for your heresy.

    18. Re:Coud be that women lie more to male doctors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      More likley male doctors are reluctant to closely examine a woman's chest on any suspicion they can't back up in court should they get sued for sexual misconduct.

    19. Re:Coud be that women lie more to male doctors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As someone who has talked to several women in my lifetime, I can assure you that they do NOT hold back on talking about their problems. Such a comment could only have been posted by someone who has never spoken to a woman in their lifetime so I implore you (and whoever modded this insightful), Treasure this time! Once you talk to a woman you can never go back to not knowing what its like!

    20. Re:Coud be that women lie more to male doctors by igny · · Score: 1

      The effect is probably on the statistician side. If you keep conducting studies trying to correlate some events with gender, you will get 1 study per 20 that "confirms" with confidence level of 95% that gender has effect on some of the events.

      --
      In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
    21. Re:Coud be that women lie more to male doctors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It could also be that male doctors are afraid to check everything as thoroughly on a female patient that a female doctor would for fear of being hit with a false sexual assault charge.

      Any way it works, you gotta love how the hate-filled and discriminatory article is so willing to tear down male doctors and men in general.

    22. Re:Coud be that women lie more to male doctors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm with BigDukeSix in thinking your reply was kinda dumb.

      On the other hand, you might love this: http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

      "Per capita cheese consumption correlates with number of people who died by becoming tangled in their bedsheets"! :-D

    23. Re:Coud be that women lie more to male doctors by lsatenstein · · Score: 1

      What I think the information lacks is the listing of the ages of the victims.
      I would think that women get an attack at an older age than does a man.
      She is therefore closer to end-of-life (in years) than the man.

      --
      Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
    24. Re: Coud be that women lie more to male doctors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      These statistics are being twisted to create something of a great big fat nothing burger. The fact is, according to the CDC: Between 70% and 89% of sudden cardiac events occur in men. And they occur at an earlier age.

      Do you think itâ(TM)s possible, just maybe, that the statistics are coming from the fact that the reason is, just maybe, 1 in 4 men have heart attacks, and they have them much more often than women, and they have them earlier than women?

      Otherwise generally healthier men have their first gear attack experience when they are in their mid 50s. Hell, by the time a woman is having her first heart attack, she has develop all manner of other diseases being presented, because she is now an older person.

      In the next decade, when I experience my first heart attack, do you know which sex I want the doctor to be? You guessed it, who gives two shits or a flying fuck?

      I want the very best doctor. I donâ(TM)t care if they are black, white, yellow, green, purple or chartreuse. I could care even less if itâ(TM)s a man or a woman. Thereâ(TM)s no room for SJW causes in medicine. Allow only the best to become employed in Emergency Medicine. Fuck all the rest of them.

      Let the rest become bankers or working in insurance sales.

    25. Re:Coud be that women lie more to male doctors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Funny how any time we get data showing things like fewer women going into science and engineering professions, slashdot is quick to grade down comments from anyone suggesting there are explanations outside the data as presented, but show slashdot a dataset indicating female doctors do a better job than male doctors, and suddenly commenters who are interested in alternative explanations and additional variables see their comments shoot straight to the top.

      If women don’t want to be doctors, it’s because they are just naturally biologically different from men and it’s a choice and no need to look further than the surface. But if female doctors are all-around better doctors than male doctors, oh, it’s probably because women lie.

      I’m sure that’s totally just a coincidence and not sexist cognitive dissonance, though.

    26. Re:Coud be that women lie more to male doctors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or it could be that you like blaming the victim because admitting that male doctors don't treat women equally would cause your fragile masculinity to shatter like your mom's glass dildo when it dropped out of your ass onto the tile floor in the bathroom after your 'experiment.'

    27. Re: Coud be that women lie more to male doctors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I suspect this is a likely cause. Male doctors don't want to check sensitives areas and are afraid to be through in checking her body for symptoms. He might be accused of sexual assault if he grabed her boobs for example when it wasn't "nessecary". So the male doctor spends a few extra seconds here and there to do things the "respectful" way, which may reduce chance of survival.

      Some women might also be anxious around men, which could cause release of stress hormones. Leading to increased risk of death.

      I suspect this is cause by social pressure, either the woman or man being uncomfortable with the situation, leading either to increased stress or poorer judgment. Maybe both.

  2. Easily fixed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Have all doctors identify as women and all patients identify as men.

    1. Re:Easily fixed by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Funny

      I identify as a Desert Eagle.

      Wanna trigger me? FEELING LUCKY, PUNK?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    2. Re: Easily fixed by that+this+is+not+und · · Score: 1

      Eagles are mostly carrion eaters.

      Seen any tasty road kill recently?

    3. Re: Easily fixed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, they are not. They will (as any other carnivore) feast upon a nice treat of a dead animal but they primarily eat fish, waterfowl, small mammals, sea urchins, clams, crabs.

    4. Re: Easily fixed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Eagles are predators and will resort to carrion in the absence of live prey. They are not mostly carrion eaters
      https://www.nationaleaglecenter.org/eagle-diet-feeding/

    5. Re: Easily fixed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Eagles are mostly carrion eaters.

      This refers to a bird of prey. Not the spacegoing kind.

      I identify as a Desert Eagle.

      This refers to a firearm. A .50 caliber handgun designed for use in the Middle East theater against moderate body armor.

    6. Re:Easily fixed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That wouldn't help you in some European languages that apply their random genders to any noun.
      As far as I know: In Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain you'd be female. In France male. In a seemingly sane languages, like Dutch or Greek, you'd be neuter.

    7. Re: Easily fixed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LOL

  3. Alternative hypothesis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It could also be the female cardiologists are less experienced, less senior or less competent. Therefore they are only assigned the easier, more routine, lower-risk cases. The obviously very hard and high-risk cases are assigned to the best cardiologist available. Obviously the hard cases are going to have a higher mortality no matter what treatment is done so it could make the experienced cardiologists look worse.

    I think this work pattern is very typical - for instance I work in IT. More mundane, less urgent bugs are assigned to less experienced staff. If the whole system is coming down or there's a serious vulnerability you pull in the big guns.

    1. Re:Alternative hypothesis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'd bet most ERs only have one cardiologist available at any given time.

    2. Re:Alternative hypothesis by Chrisq · · Score: 2

      I'd bet most ERs only have one cardiologist available at any given time.

      I bet a lot of the smaller ones have none present at times and rely on on-call when needed.

    3. Re: Alternative hypothesis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      It could also be the female cardiologists are less experienced, less senior or less competent. Therefore they are only assigned the easier, more routine, lower-risk cases.

      Does Tokyo Medical University approve of their admissions staff posting on Slashdot during working hours?

    4. Re:Alternative hypothesis by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It could also be the female cardiologists are less experienced, less senior or less competent. Therefore they are only assigned the easier, more routine, lower-risk cases.

      If this was the case, then the disparity would show up for both male and female patients. Yet according to TFA, the survival difference for male patients was not statistically significant.

    5. Re: Alternative hypothesis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Or that there is no significant difference between the doctors treatment. The difference could be caused by female patients largely being more comfortable with the female doctors. Limiting stress has a significant impact on outcomes for this condition.

    6. Re:Alternative hypothesis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That's not what it says.

      It says "In the new study everyone was more likely to survive if they saw a female physician"

      Which means that men seeing female doctors survive better too. Sometimes you have to be careful with reports, because male doctors kill more women is true. but male doctors kill more of everyone is MORE true.

      So - basically the study is implying that there is something about male doctos that increases mortality.

    7. Re:Alternative hypothesis by guruevi · · Score: 1

      We're talking about a 0.6% difference in mortality rates here on the raw data, well within the error bars. The study itself even shows that for smaller P-values (which basically means increasing statistical accuracy) the difference is about half that or less.

      The reporting and abstract painstakingly try to increase the relevance of this study but it seems in ~1,000 cases over all 500,000 was the statistical likelihood of survival larger with a female doctor. This doesn't mean that these people would've guaranteed to live, only that they had a 1 in 60 (or actually closer 1 to 500 chance) of surviving if they had had a female doctor vs a male doctor.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    8. Re:Alternative hypothesis by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Say an advance nation has its best doctors selected on merit. No average doctors are allowed.
      That would ensure everyone who arrived would get to see an expert team.
      Get to people in less time with skilled ambulance crews.
      Have helicopter crews that can fly in all conditions, day and night to get the sick to a nations very best teaching hospital.
      That would get more people to a quality hospital more quickly and the team ready would be the very best that nation could educate.
      The next question would be the shift work. Who is on at 2 am?
      Who gets to see all the difficult patients after a long shift? Who gets to go home at night? Who gets to work during normal office hours?
      A nations medical literature and medical experts should only be selected on merit.
      Then only get to work in the ER if they can keep to the best peer reviewed standards.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    9. Re:Alternative hypothesis by edtice1559 · · Score: 1

      Or it could be what the OP said. That female doctors are being assigned easier cases. So the net result is that we can't really conclude anything.

    10. Re:Alternative hypothesis by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      It says "In the new study everyone was more likely to survive if they saw a female physician"

      TFA says that, but the report it is based on does not. TFA is poorly written by someone that can't do math (e.g.: the difference between 11.9 and 12.4 is not "12%"). A journalist who can't calculate a percentage is unlikely to be able to judge statistical significance.

    11. Re: Alternative hypothesis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Clearly, thatâ(TM)s not what the writer of the report is suggesting be done.

      We need all manner of arbitrary reasons for someone becoming a doctor. Might as well inject sexual preference, national origin and political party affiliations into the equation, while we are at it.

      Most efficient ability in saving lives is not a great enough reason.

  4. outrageous! by c6gunner · · Score: 0, Troll

    Just imagine the SJW outrage if the study had pointed in the opposite direction, with male doctors having better outcomes.

    1. Re:outrageous! by asylumx · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It's odd that you don't see that it would still be the same study. Men survive more than women if the doctor is male, and women survive more than men if the doctor is female. There's plenty for both party's fanatics to be butt-hurt about, I guess you just decided to pick one.

    2. Re:outrageous! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      "Imagine how outraged people I disagree with would be if the facts didn't support their case."

      Yeah... some rethinking may be in order.

    3. Re:outrageous! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Imagine how accurate this would be if it were accurate, the "facts" here are pretty limited.

      This study is being very liberal with incomplete data, and even then there's only a 0.6% difference which would probably reduce with additional statistical accuracy by their own admission.

      Thread poster is right, this is an amount of difference that's well within margin of error, and if that error were pushed the other direction and the article title suggested male doctors had higher success rates by 0.6% there would be shrill shrieking on the part of SJW's about how this is the Patriarchy making up statistics and trying to defraud these glorious wymyn their rightful place as best human type alive and not condemning the evil men.

      Lies, damned lies, and statistics. The article should never have been written either way, since the outcome is so insignificant. It was written knowing that most people don't know statistics and don't bother actually reading anything with a % sign, especially if that percentage has decimal points. It's a shit stirring article in a world that needs a whole lot less shit stirring.

    4. Re:outrageous! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You sound like you need a safe space

    5. Re: outrageous! by c6gunner · · Score: 2

      It's odd that you don't see that it would still be the same study. Men survive more than women if the doctor is male, and women survive more than men if the doctor is female.

      If you had bothered to read all the way too the 4th sentence of the summary, you would have seen this:

      It may also be that female doctors do a better job than their male counterparts. "In the new study everyone was more likely to survive if they saw a female physician, and a study published last year [...] indicated all patients of female physicians had lower mortality and hospital readmission rates," reports Scientific American

      But why actually read what you're commenting on, right? Total waste of time.

      There's plenty for both party's fanatics to be butt-hurt about, I guess you just decided to pick one.

      Judging by the fact that I got modded "troll" while the jackass who couldn't even be bothered to read the fucking summary got modded "+5 insightful", I guess we know which fanatics managed to get their grubby little mitts on mod points today.

    6. Re:outrageous! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I am the same poster that you're responding to. I'm neither agreeing nor disagreeing with anything you just said, except for one thing: "thread poster is right". Thread poster said precisely nothing except "man, I'd be so smug right now if I were right".

      That falls squarely into the class of "not even wrong".

  5. "suddenly rises by about 12 percent" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No it doesn't.

    [...] a heart attack patient dies in the ER about 11.9 percent of the time overall -- but the research team found women with heart attacks will die about 12.4 percent of the time if their cases are handled by male doctors.

    That's more like a 4% rise, not a 12% rise. Overstating threefold much?

    1. Re:"suddenly rises by about 12 percent" by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      That's more like a 4% rise, not a 12% rise. Overstating threefold much?

      To be fair, the mathematical blunders only occur in TFA, not in the original report.

    2. Re:"suddenly rises by about 12 percent" by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 2

      No it doesn't.

      [...] a heart attack patient dies in the ER about 11.9 percent of the time overall -- but the research team found women with heart attacks will die about 12.4 percent of the time if their cases are handled by male doctors.

      That's more like a 4% rise, not a 12% rise. Overstating threefold much?

      A common mistake on /., conflating increase in risk with increase in occurrence probability.

    3. Re: "suddenly rises by about 12 percent" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Their study has a margin of error 0.5%?
      This smells like p hacking.

  6. Females are different to males by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From the abstract: "We further find that male physicians with more exposure to female patients and female physicians have more success treating female patients."
    http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/07/31/1800097115

    Just seems like people with more experience in treating females are better at treating females.

    1. Re: Females are different to males by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Seems like it might be helpful to interview those doctors and figure out what they are doing differently. The difference is small, so something you wouldn't see in most of the population. You'd have to treat a lot of patients before you came across it.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re:Females are different to males by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, it is just men don't care about the feminist woman any more. It is easy to tell one if she comes in complaining that she is the victim of everything. It she is equal in every way let her suffer it out just like a man.

      I mean to the feminist we are all equal, right? Well except when they don't want to be equal. I just say "Too bad."

    3. Re:Females are different to males by Errol+backfiring · · Score: 2

      That still suggests that women are different from men in treating heart attacks, in a way that is not known to all emergency room personnel.

      --
      Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
    4. Re:Females are different to males by hackertourist · · Score: 1

      ISTR that the symptoms of a heart attack have some differences between women and men, and in women, the symptoms can be so subtle they're misdiagnosed more often than in men.

    5. Re:Females are different to males by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have an uncle who is a retired MD. He says that "back in the day" doctors were essentially taught that other than the reproductive system women were just smaller men. Now they are realizing the many subtle differences in the way men and women are affected differently by the same ailments. As it turns out, the old checklist for "having a heart attack" is based on the male's symptoms. Not at all surprising due to the few female medical doctors when the list was made. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by ~~stupidity~~ ignorance."

      From http://www.heart.org/en/health-topics/heart-attack/warning-signs-of-a-heart-attack "As with men, women’s most common heart attack symptom is chest pain or discomfort. But women are somewhat more likely than men to experience some of the other common symptoms, particularly shortness of breath, nausea/vomiting, and back or jaw pain."

  7. Resuscitation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    This is a stupid idea... but could male doctors hesitate for a second before tearing off the blouse and starting a heart massage?

    1. Re: Resuscitation by that+this+is+not+und · · Score: 1

      Maybe that excess fatty material gets in the way.

    2. Re:Resuscitation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They're medical doctors and ought to be trained for that. If true it would mean they're not fit for the job.
      The narrative of the incompetent male doctor that kills female patients. SJW are going to love that one.

  8. Men Die More From Heart Attacks Than Women -- Unle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Men Die More From Heart Attacks Than Women -- Unless the ER Doc Is Male" is logically equivalent. Do we interpret it the same way?

  9. "The story doesn't jump to conclusions" by SCVonSteroids · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No? The TFS sure as hell does!

    --
    I tend to rant.
    1. Re:"The story doesn't jump to conclusions" by Tranzistors · · Score: 1

      Perhaps you would like to clarify, what conclusion does the TFS makes.

    2. Re:"The story doesn't jump to conclusions" by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      The only conclusion that anyone is drawing anywhere here on this page right now is the following: I conclude that SCVonSteroids doesn't understand what the word "conclusion" means.

    3. Re:"The story doesn't jump to conclusions" by SCVonSteroids · · Score: 1

      It's possible. English is not my native language, but please do educate me.

      A summary is this, no? -> "Women Die More From Heart Attacks Than Men -- Unless the ER Doc Is Female"
      A conclusion is what you determine based on your research, no? -> "Women Die More From Heart Attacks Than Men -- Unless the ER Doc Is Female"

      Is the summary not the clickbait sentence that gets us to the article page?
      I'll be happy to admit I'm wrong if I am, but fucking hell I'm pretty sure you're just being nit picky twits. My point was pretty clear I'd say, I'm sorry I did something to you at some point to make you hate me.

      --
      I tend to rant.
    4. Re:"The story doesn't jump to conclusions" by Dragonslicer · · Score: 1

      First, "study" means the published research paper, not the news article ("story") describing it.

      In this context, "jump to conclusions" means "stating a cause". While some article writers and other doctors not involved in the study will gladly speculate on possible causes for the statistical difference, the study itself doesn't do so.

    5. Re:"The story doesn't jump to conclusions" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm sorry I did something to you at some point to make you hate me.

      You apologized for something for which you neend't have apologized...I hate you for that!!

    6. Re:"The story doesn't jump to conclusions" by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      2 things:

      1. A headline is not a conclusion. It's also not a summary. Quite critically a headline is something in isolation that should never have to stand on its own as it lacks context. It's only purpose is to get readers to read on.

      2. The "conclusion" that you think is being drawn in the headline has nothing to do with this sentence in the summary: "The study doesn't jump to conclusions...". That line in the summary is talking about the conclusion that could be drawn from the statistics (the why). The headline is simply concluding the statistics themselves (the what), something that the study itself also does.

  10. Could it possibly be age? by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    (from the referenced paper in the article, page 918 left side):

    Women are often older when they present with their first AMI, at an average age of 71.8 years compared with 65 years for men.

    (with AMI meaning Acute Myocardial Infarction)

    Now, could it be that the shorter long term survival rate has more to do with age than gender?

    Also, there is a very interesting graph on the previous page depicting the AMI-related deaths for both sexes, with female deaths due to cardiovascular faults being in sharp decline since 2000. So either something happened around that time that made women less susceptible to dying from a heart attack, or something else took over as the big lady killer.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    1. Re: Could it possibly be age? by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It seems like if it were due to age, then the effect wouldn't disappear when female doctors were treating them.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re: Could it possibly be age? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It seems like if it were due to age, then the effect wouldn't disappear when female doctors were treating them.

      Who said the effect disappears?

    3. Re: Could it possibly be age? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It doesn't, the effect of the female doctor is 0.5%, the difference between men and women 6%.

    4. Re: Could it possibly be age? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      The main issue seems to be that although there are effective treatments they are underprescribed for women.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    5. Re: Could it possibly be age? by nedlohs · · Score: 1

      It's what the entire article is about.

    6. Re: Could it possibly be age? by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Then I guess we should examine why.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    7. Re: Could it possibly be age? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Scroll down to the conclusions in the report, they tell you why.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    8. Re: Could it possibly be age? by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      The main issue seems to be that although there are effective treatments they are underprescribed for women.

      Why do you think this? Is there a citation?

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    9. Re: Could it possibly be age? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1, Informative

      It's in the conclusion section of TFP.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    10. Re:Could it possibly be age? by datavirtue · · Score: 1

      Holy statistics Batman! The data is skewed Robin, all things are not equal.

      --
      I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
    11. Re:Could it possibly be age? by ErroneousBee · · Score: 1

      It could be age related, in that the age profiles of male/female doctors are different, and there is a larger ratio of male doctors in their declining years making more "old person" mistakes than the women.

      But my pet theory is that women are better doctors.

      --
      **TODO** Steal someone elses sig.
    12. Re:Could it possibly be age? by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Also, there is a very interesting graph on the previous page depicting the AMI-related deaths for both sexes, with female deaths due to cardiovascular faults being in sharp decline since 2000. So either something happened around that time that made women less susceptible to dying from a heart attack, or something else took over as the big lady killer.

      Here is the same graph (not divided by gender, though). The trend increases and decreases, To some degree matching cigarette consumption over the same period. Of course medical care has improved also over that time. Male cigarette smokers dropped more sooner, and farther, than women. There were more male smokers, too, so they had farther to drop. Currently rates between the two are the same.

      The link between cigarettes and heart disease doesn't explain everything but it does explain a lot.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    13. Re: Could it possibly be age? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I dont have to , I know the Answer!!!

      The evil male patriarchy and its misogynistic young doctors are out to whittle down the female population to prevent them from taking jobs!!! /sarc

    14. Re: Could it possibly be age? by phantomfive · · Score: 1
      Oh yeah, here it is:

      "Recommended perfusion therapies for AMI in women are similar to those in men, yet bleeding risks and other complications remain greater in women. Women are undertreated with guideline-based recommendations, leading to worse outcomes and increased rates of readmission, reinfarction, and deaths in the first year after MI. CR is underused and underprescribed for women, but novel approaches to increase participation by women are promising. To further compound undertreatment, women’s adherence to these evidence-based recommendations is sub- optimal."

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    15. Re:Could it possibly be age? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Women are often older when they present with their first AMI, at an average age of 71.8 years compared with 65 years for men.

      (with AMI meaning Acute Myocardial Infarction)

      Now, could it be that the shorter long term survival rate has more to do with age than gender?

      I'd be willing to bet that a good many women presenting with their first AMI are not, in fact, having their first AMI. They've already had one, at a younger age, and didn't seek treatment and didn't tell anyone. This is very much a cultural thing. It's become a trope in TV and movies since at least the '80s that men are "whiny" about health issues, and women "tough it out." The trope is belied by the statistical reality that women do visit doctors more frequently than men, but there's a kernel of truth to their willingness to simply suffer in silence when the problem is just nebulous transient pain.

      Some of the difference is also due to the fact that a panic attack and an AMI feel the same. Women who have panic attacks start to discount the feeling as "not really a heart problem". After spending years ignoring those symptoms, they don't even know that their problem has switched from something bad but not dangerous to something life-threatening.

    16. Re: Could it possibly be age? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Wait, some poor snowflake was triggered by my pointing out that the paper in question contains certain information? To them that's "flamebait"?

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    17. Re: Could it possibly be age? by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      The conclusion is not really too clear on the reason. It details that bleeding happens more often in women and that CR procedures are less often used, but does not explore the reason why this is the case. The only thing I can take away from it with some veracity is that there is less data of AMI related deaths in women, that there are fundamental physiological differences between the sexes and and that this leads to a lack of experience to assess the symptoms correctly.

      What I'm still missing is the answer to why.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    18. Re: Could it possibly be age? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wait, some poor snowflake was triggered by my pointing out that the paper in question contains certain information? To them that's "flamebait"?

      Nah, you're being downmodded because you're a Nazi. Those people downmodding you are simply fighting the good social justice fight.

      That you use alt-right language like "snowflake" and "trigger" is very telling. Be gone, Trumpanze.

  11. The obvious solution is ... by Nutria · · Score: 1

    for women to have fewer heart attacks, like they did when they stayed home, kept house and raised the kids.

    --
    "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
  12. So which is it? by SlaveToTheGrind · · Score: 5, Informative

    First proposition:

    In the new study everyone was more likely to survive if they saw a female physician

    Second proposition:

    The researchers divided 500,000-plus cases into four categories: male doctors treating men; male doctors treating women; female doctors treating men; and female doctors treating women. " All of those are statistically indistinguishable except for male doctor -- female patient ," says Brad Greenwood, an author on the study

    Since the second is apparently from an author, I'd tend to guess the first is "journalistic flair" (ahem) from someone carrying around a gender hammer. Unfortunately can't look at the study itself to confirm -- the link in TFS is actually to the AHA 2016 statement and the actual study is paywalled.

    1. Re:So which is it? by Entrope · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I was hoping to see the actual confidence ranges that gave rise to the study author's conclusion. Was there much overlap in the "statistically indistinguishable" cases, or barely any? How much separation was there between those cases and the one that was distinguished? Did they appropriately adjust their idea of statistical significance for testing however many hypotheses they considered, or did they go trawling for p-values?

    2. Re:So which is it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Also - there were in general better outcomes overall for female doctors according to the summary. So with both statments - and them being contradictory, I am not sure that this says anything useful at all.

    3. Re:So which is it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I've come to the realization that if I immediately go to the source with the goal of finding data that I can refute, than it only means that I don't like the conclusions they came to & it doesn't matter what the data says, I'll find someway to disagree with it anyway. It's actually a hard thing to go to a paper that I believe to be bullshit with the aim of understanding how & why they came to the conclusions they did, and only after that, tear it the fuck apart.

    4. Re:So which is it? by guruevi · · Score: 5, Informative

      I can get to it since I have subscriptions to these journals:

      If you want better P-values, the significance halves. The reporting was done on the raw data which shows a slight variation within the error bars. Even if the study is correct, it comes down that statistically speaking, 2 out of the 500,000 cases may have survived longer if they had a female doctor.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    5. Re:So which is it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let's not forget that only 13% of cardiologist are female. This may have a dramatic influence on the statistics.

    6. Re:So which is it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      At the X confidence level, say 95%, and if you're looking at Y relationships, say 4, it is quite likely that 1 of them will correlate "significantly" - even if the actual data is completely random (without any causal relationships existing). First thing I've gotta wonder is if this "study" had preregistered its study variables and hypotheses. I'm betting it did not. That is, its more junk science.

    7. Re:So which is it? by swillden · · Score: 1

      Let's not forget that only 13% of cardiologist are female. This may have a dramatic influence on the statistics.

      This is about ER docs. You won't often find a cardiologist working in the ER. Almost never.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    8. Re:So which is it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Still asymmetric 28% women...

  13. Could be SJWs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Maybe male doctors are scared of the rape accusation if touching a female patient...

  14. I'm too Sexy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Maybe male doctors are too sexy for female patients. The study did not subtract out the patients George Clooney treated.

  15. Bring on the robots? by vrassoc · · Score: 1, Funny

    But I guess we'll have to make sure that they're not learning from predominantly male diagnosticians.

    1. Re:Bring on the robots? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Guess what. Robots programmed by male programmers... Then trained by male diagnosticians...

      if (patient == woman) { // my educated guess
          printf("Diagnosis: on her period (95%), breast cancer (4%), other womanly stuff (1%).");
      } else { // normal diagnostic operation
      }

    2. Re:Bring on the robots? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Informative

      The study concludes:

      "Sex differences occur in the pathophysiology and clinical pre-sentation of MI and affect treatment delays. Recommended perfusion therapies for AMI in women are similar to those in men, yet bleeding risks and other complications remain greater in women. Women are undertreated with guideline-based recommendations, leading to worse outcomes and increased rates of readmission, reinfarction, and deaths in the first year after MI."

      So it seems like some doctors are failing to diagnose the issue as quickly in women as they do in men, because of the different ways that the condition presents. Furthermore they undertreat women.

      Also,

      "To further compound undertreatment, womenâ(TM)s adherence to these evidence-based recommendations is sub-optimal. There is a need for continued public health messages and interventions to target racial and ethnic minority women"

      So when they are treated women from certain backgrounds are somewhat less likely to stick to the treatments. I kind of wonder if cost is a factor there.

      The difference in outcomes between male and female doctors treating women is statistically significant but small in comparison to these bigger issues.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    3. Re:Bring on the robots? by datavirtue · · Score: 1

      To the tune of 2 in 500k patients. Not a problem.

      --
      I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
    4. Re:Bring on the robots? by edtice1559 · · Score: 1

      Is it possible that the doctors aren't treating the women as aggressively because these conditions are less common on women thus making it harder to diagnose?

    5. Re: Bring on the robots? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Gotta be Boogeyman focused, if it doesn't point towards the patriarchy it can't be true

    6. Re:Bring on the robots? by aticus.finch · · Score: 1

      The difference in outcomes between male and female doctors treating women is statistically significant but small in comparison to these bigger issues.

      I don't think you know what "statistically significant" means.

  16. Clap clap clap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's the dumbest shit I've read today and in 2018, you read a lot of shit a day. A 10% statistically deviation, seems very low to me. Could it be that man tend to work more nightshifts then woman, meaning the strokes you see in that time are more severe or had a longer history then the once you see during a day? Just a guess, but in times of SJW cherry picking the news, this calculation goes right to the flat earth believers for me ....

  17. So which is it by alvinrod · · Score: 1

    The third hypothesis should be easily testable as you can look at success rate across all surgeries based on sex of patient and doctor. It could well be that female surgeons have better success rates across all patients, though a weirder finding would be success rate correlated to similarly between sex of the patient and doctor.

    The second seems more likely to me from my own perspective as I know that that symptoms of a heart attack present differently in males and females. But I expect medical professionals to know those differences and be well versed in spotting the signs, so I think that to be unlikely as well, at least without further reasons to suggest this cause. Maybe if the rate of female heart attacks was much lower, but it is a serious medical event and it does not seem to be the type of thing that men would get wrong unless there there are a lot of other conditions where the same happens.

    The first seems unlikely for a variety of reasons. If it were the case, you would expect to see this across all kinds of different conditions. It makes no sense for male doctors to pay attention to female patients for all conditions other than heart attacks. Research has also shown that men will be more sympathetic towards women than other men, so it seems unlikely unless this is a strange case where male doctors are trying to be too reassuring, but if that were the case we should expect to see this in cases outside of heart attacks as well.

    I think all of these are easily testable so check the statistics and figure out what it is. I will offer an alternative (and highly uniformed) hypothis though: Male doctors work more hours and have worse patient outcomes as a result. This could be verified by looking at outcomes between male doctors based on hours worked. I am not confident in this hypothesis, but not much less than those stated in the article.

  18. Re:"Posted by BeauHD" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's all you need to know folks.

    Beau, I've seen your twitter account, I've seen your submissions here.
    Cut this shit out.

    So post BeauHD's twitter account so we can all see how bad the shitposting is.

  19. Making open questions and not that different by esperto · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Read most of the paper and the SciAm article, and I have two critiques, one for the paper and one for SciAm:
    For the paper what seem to have happen is two fold.

    First they had an open question, wanted to see if patients had different outcomes from male and female doctors, this is a prime example on how to poke the data until something came out, you just look at every combination until something presents a statistical significant value, I bet that if they do this study again they will get different findings.
    Second, the difference was not that big, 0,5% less on the outcome of both cases, mortality and readmission, (or about 4% in relative terms) when treated by a woman, when the biggest difference in outcome, according the numbers by SciAm, was the gender itself, 26% of women will die within a year of a heart attack compared with 19% of men.

    The researches say they adjusted for several factors, but I wonder if differences in choices of time or location of work between men and women may cause the difference, if it is actually real.
    And by the way, the mean age of patients in the study is 80 years old, and almost 2/3 were women.

    For the SciAm article, they seem to not report on the paper, but on part of the raw data in the paper, which is likely not adjusted for confounding factors and the report also seem very biased and sensationalist.

    1. Re:Making open questions and not that different by wired_parrot · · Score: 1

      Second, the difference was not that big, 0,5% less on the outcome of both cases, mortality and readmission, (or about 4% in relative terms) when treated by a woman, when the biggest difference in outcome, according the numbers by SciAm, was the gender itself, 26% of women will die within a year of a heart attack compared with 19% of men.

      This. The difference is very small. If you're in the ER for a heart attack, you should be seen by a doctor - male or female - immediately. Time is of the essence. The sensationalist tone I've seen this reported in the media may lead some women to seek a female doctor over a male one in the ER, and the delay in finding a doctor of the proper gender will lead to a far higher mortality rate than the male-female difference.

    2. Re:Making open questions and not that different by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      SciAm does not hide the fact that they intentionally include politics in their paper write-ups. It was part of the reason I stopped subscribing years ago.

      (I want to read about the science only, not some Dr. Strangelove version of it, which is where SciAm was gradually going.)

    3. Re:Making open questions and not that different by datavirtue · · Score: 1

      With the amount of salt, sugar, and refined flour that people eat, being 80 means you are on the brink of death any moment. Your genetics clearly indicate at that point that you should have lived to be 120.

      --
      I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
    4. Re:Making open questions and not that different by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is true, but the the bigger issue is :If this is true, what steps can we take, to train male doctors to be as successful.

  20. Holy Clickbait Headline by asylumx · · Score: 0

    Talk about a headline that's spun all to hell. How is that any different from "Men die more from heart attacks than Women, unless the ER doc is male"??? It's the same damned fact. And yet I don't see anyone else pointing this out. I'm depressed at the state of /. commentators these days.

    A better, Slashdot oriented headline would be something like "Heart attack mortality rate bears correlation with gender of patient vs. doctor" but I guess less of you would click on it if it said that, eh?

    1. Re:Holy Clickbait Headline by vrassoc · · Score: 1

      It is not the same thing. More men die from heart attacks, yes, but that number is not affected by the doctor's gender. It is only the female mortality figure from heart attack that is affected by the doctor's gender.

    2. Re:Holy Clickbait Headline by datavirtue · · Score: 1

      Then no one would click on the article and erupt into a flurry of angry comments--the only kind of comments that are worth money.

      --
      I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
    3. Re:Holy Clickbait Headline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To the tune of 2 women out of 500K. Present an argument that this is more than statistical noise.

    4. Re:Holy Clickbait Headline by asylumx · · Score: 1

      Bingo -- and I realize the I am included in that.

  21. Re:Maybe doctors don't want to go to jail by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 4, Informative

    CPR is not used for mycoardial infarction. The heart stopping, such as from atrial tachycardia, is treatable with CPU. CPR is quite dangerous, it tends to break ribs and is not that efficient. The mortality rate for CPR is also quite high: if you ever perform CPR in the field, it's important not to blame yourself personally if it fails, even if you made small mistakes. Only roughly 1/3 of CPR patients survive.

    Myocardial Infarctions are tissue death in the heart, caused by a blockage. They're typically painful because muscle tissue in the heart is _dying_. Many people have survived numerous small infarctions. ECG's, however, electro cardiograms, where electrodes are placed on the chest and a few elsewhere on the body to monitor heart activity, does involve at least opening up the shirt and exposing the chest.

    Also, many patients are quite frightened in the emergency room. I can easily picture a frightened, older female patient, who grew up more than 50 years ago, being less frightened and less reluctant to share their full medical information with a male physician, and their family or caregivers less able to communicate with a male physician.

  22. But gender is just a social construct! by blindseer · · Score: 4, Funny

    Just remove this meaningless social construct that is gender from the study and the problem goes away.

    --
    I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
  23. Survival of the best by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It is called "survival of the best". If you have a number of men and a number of women going into a profession, more women quit over time to, basically, be a mother, while discovering for themselves a career isn't all that. However, the best are more likely to stay, they are less likely to give it up when they are really good at it. It isn't that women are better at this profession, but that it's more likely the bad apples are removed while the male ones will persist.

    1. Re: Survival of the best by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think this is it since women treating men did not result in a statistically significant change.

      I think this has more to do with a culture where some women are unwilling to listen to a man's instructions - even if those instructions could save their lives.

  24. Re:Gawd! by Evtim · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They already did, some time ago.

    Google "BBC health gap" and prepare to be horrified (it's a series of articles written by some dickless man calling himself a doctor) . Somehow even though women live 8 yrs longer, are healthier, die less at work (93:7), die less from suicide (3:1) there is a health gap, a systematic war against women of which the whole medical profession (where women are the majority) is complicit.

    The best I have ever heard is that women are smaller and weaker than men because we systematically and deliberately underfed them throughout the whole of history. I wonder why female chimps are smaller and weaker (and just about every other animal); that patriarchy goes a long way it seems!

    BTW, according to Wikipedia there was a society that gave poorer food to women and in this society women did live shorter than men. Guess which society was that? Athens. The city state, that is. Yes, the fathers of democracy. The Spartans had better eugenics program --> they did not allow teenage pregnancy which was an amazing insight for those times. They'd also allow, in exceptional cases, polygamy in light of the numerous young widows among the warrior class. But then, there were other issues in their society (e.g. slavery) that were not so great...

    It is absolutely ridiculous that the most privilege group of people in history (white western women) who are surrounded by endless invisible walls of protection and comfort (provided mostly my men), who rubbed their backsides on the banks of the best universities never seen a day of hardship, while their peers in the rest of the world were working full time jobs (sometimes more than one) and rising a family (just ask what my mother or grandmothers think about those screeching harpies...be prepared for the c-word to be mentioned repeatedly) are now declaring the world to the most horrific of places, their position to be one of victimhood and oppression while opening the doors (and legs) to cultures that are decades behind the West in terms of equal treatment of different people (who are the greatest homophobes in the world - Africans and Arabs! The stories I have heard from white, gay South Africans...wow man, just wow!).

    In my worst nightmares I could not imagine that the West would come to this. All those years I am here (17), among you, I was worried about the rednecks, the ultra-religious creationists, the "foking banksters", the 1%, the mafia that is the energy industry (oil, gas), food, medicine, cosmetics and so on....anyone can see my /. post history.....and now my own people (the left, don't blame me, I can't help it, no way you can be conservative with extrovert and openness score in the 95 percentile range) betrayed me and became anti-science, anti-free speech, anti-reality for fuck's sake! I am ashamed of myself, that I missed that transformation for many years (yes, I did have horrendous personal problems so I let everything else slide, including political analysis, but still....) and repeated for a while the bulshit without checking the facts...well we live and learn I guess.

    I am well aware where the division in groups and the oppressed-oppressor narrative lead. So, westerners, pick your ultimate destiny --> fascist labor camps, or communist Gulags. You don't have a third option since the silent majority happily/docilly allowed the nutters from both sides to hijack the political discourse, the mainstream media, the educational system and so on...now 2 generations have been screwed already. We will harvest what we sow. Good luck!

  25. Highest risk threated by man? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Maybe the men threat the higher risk patient... Maybe, the most experienced doctor are male and focus on complex cases.

  26. Correlation is NOT Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I wasn't expecting a scientifically illiterate to write an article on Slashdot. No, that study does not prove a woman has more chances to die, it shows a correlation. Please learn the difference.

  27. Umm...math... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "her risk of death suddenly rises by about 12 percent. Put another way, a heart attack patient dies in the ER about 11.9 percent of the time overall -- but the research team found women with heart attacks will die about 12.4 percent of the time if their cases are handled by male doctors"

    Women have a 0.5% MORE of a chance of dying when worked on by a male doctor.

    That's not 12% more often than others (11.9%). That's a bit more than 4%.

    Unless I've missed something.

  28. I smell bias or stupidity. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I like how all the possibilities put men at fault. What if women just don't heed what men say when they tell them they need to make changes after a heart attack.

    Oh he's just mansplaining that I had a heart attack because I don't exercise and my diet consists of nothing but Twinkies and pizza.

  29. Re:Gawd! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The argument is that those in power (those at the very, very top) are typically men. And that's not entirely false.

    However what is not acknowledged is that those in power are not in favor of any particular gender: they'll exploit anyone for power & profit. The average bloke on the street is just as much under their thumb as the average woman. c.f. The various wars that have occurred over millennia, where males have brutally suffered.

    The 100 most powerful people may be males, but that means bubkiss for the 4 billion other males (and 4 billion other females) on the planet.

  30. There more male cardiovascular specialists. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Cardiovascular disease
            Male physicians: 19,435 (89.2 percent)
            Female physicians: 2,365 (10.8 percent)

    ( https://www.beckersasc.com/gastroenterology-and-endoscopy/male-female-active-physicians-70-statistics-by-specialty.html )

    It's hard to point to the specific selection bias since there so many to consider. But if I had to guess, when female elderly go for a checkup with nothing wrong with them under the referral of the family physician, more than a few make an effort at picking a female doctor. Alternatively, when patients are admitted to critical care, there significantly more male cardio surgeons/docs available than female so the male docs end up treating most of the really bad stuff...

    Really, so long as the disparity is so significant, there's just too many selection biases to choose from.

  31. Female doctors treat fewer people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    On average, female doctors treat fewer patients, work fewer hours and work in less risky fields. This makes their mortality rates look better than their male counterparts, but

    I would hazard a guess that we will see a series of co-variables in operation that affect the outcome, and these will involve a filtering so the tougher cases go to men to deal with.

  32. Studies on CPR by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Not too long ago I saw a report on a study that women were much less likely to receive CPR. There were two reasons - bystanders still thought woman were less likely to have a heart attack and thus just thought "she fainted" and that people did not want to risk potential "sexual assault" charges for performing chest compression. They had concluded that both of these factored in to higher rate of death for females from heart attack.

  33. Mandatory XKCD by LavouraArcaica · · Score: 1

    https://xkcd.com/882/

    I need to say this: despite the fact that misoginy is a real problem in our society, this is just a spurious correlation.

    1. Re:Mandatory XKCD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It is interesting that you displayed some insight using the comic, and understood that many researchers using statistical software come up with correlations that are mathematical but dubious in reality.

      But you feel the need to virtue signal, by making a claim about something that you don't back up. In that way you just negated your argument. Let's see some data not just a person pretending to be woke.

    2. Re:Mandatory XKCD by datavirtue · · Score: 2

      Might be a problem...but not "a real problem in our society." We have bigger fish to fry than figuring out how to enhance the privilege of the ultra-privileged.

      --
      I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
  34. Re:Gawd! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The corollary to "those in power are men" is that "those destitute and homeless" are typically men too.

    And the latter group is far larger.

  35. Re:Gawd! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    What a fucking ramble. Does it ever get tiring jacking yourself off and ranting and raving about the elite liberal feminist boogeywomen? Plenty of men have never seen a real day of hardship. You know who those are? Most of you on \. or Reddit or really anyone who works in the IT sector and never grew up doing manual labor. Being a man doesn't magically make your life harder or more oppressed. I'm a white young male and maybe I'm just that fucking special, but I've never been held down by the "liberal feminist" society. My wife has a harder job than I and barely makes more as a manager than I do as the second most junior rank IT engineer. I work less hours, don't work weekends, don't work holidays, don't have patients who grab my privates, tits, or ass, and I'm not expected to take a punch to the face or risk termination for self defense. I think you're pissed off about something that isn't actually an issue and frankly if someone makes you that mad, don't listen. As far as your fears of the future - smarter idiots than you have squawked this nonsense for the last 200-some years and it's always just around the corner. Those of us who follow history see the same shit, different day. You're not special. You're wrong in literally every part of your argument and you probably just need to get fucked, but no woman in her right mind is going to touch someone who talks like you do. You condescending, small brained, ignorant retard.

  36. Re:Gawd! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Go back to sleep, you're boring.

  37. Re:Gawd! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    100% correct.

    Democrats are fundamentally opposed to the Bill of Rights today as well. They are reinventing the first amendment with kooky concepts like "speech that offends".

    Madness.

  38. Re:"Posted by BeauHD" by ArchieBunker · · Score: 1

    Hey at least it wasn't an article about who Trump was trolling today.

    --
    Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
  39. Is it possible it has more to do with the women by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is it possible it has more to do with the women than the doctor? The statistical jump is pretty small for the Male Doctor/Female Patient cohort. It could be that this percentage of women are unwilling to do what their Male doctor says post treatment. Maybe the Male doctor says to cut salt, sugar and flour. Most men and women after a heart attack follow those orders. But perhaps a small percentage of those women, when given these instructions by a man, are more resentful and rebellious and are more likely to ignore the life saving advice. After all, who does that Male doctor think he is, mansplaining my diet to me?

    Maybe.

  40. lots of explanations by ooloorie · · Score: 2

    There could be a systematic bias where male physicians are not listening to female patients' complaints as readily as [those of] a man,

    How about:

    (1) male physicians are bigger risk takers and take on harder cases

    (2) male physicians are taking a longer view picture and don't waste resources on patients that may not die in the emergency room but will die within a few days

    (3) male physicians do, in fact, listen more to their patients, about 20% of whom have do not resuscitate orders, and more who may express a verbal preference against extraordinary measures or a life with severe mental disability

    (4) there are differences in reporting between male and female physicians

    1. Re:lots of explanations by ooloorie · · Score: 1

      oh, and perhaps the most important one (related to 1):

      (5) male and female physicians choose different work environments and see different patient populations

    2. Re:lots of explanations by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      How about them?

      Do you have any evidence or are you just JAQing off?

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    3. Re:lots of explanations by ooloorie · · Score: 1

      How about them? Do you have any evidence

      No, I don't have any evidence. My points are called "alternative hypotheses". Actual scientists understand that proposing alternative hypotheses is a key element of how science makes progress.

    4. Re:lots of explanations by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Which explains why this study apparently did not do so, nor did the indignant commenter.

    5. Re:lots of explanations by Dragonslicer · · Score: 1

      Do any of those explanations account for the lack of statistical difference between male and female doctors when the patient is male?

    6. Re:lots of explanations by aticus.finch · · Score: 1

      How about them?

      Do you have any evidence or are you just JAQing off?

      To be fair, the "research" doesn't have much evidence either - their findings are within the error bars for a 95% CI. When someone comes out with "I have these results which aren't statistically significant" it's pretty much normal to ask for which confounding variables were dismissed.

    7. Re:lots of explanations by ooloorie · · Score: 2

      Do any of those explanations account for the lack of statistical difference between male and female doctors when the patient is male?

      Your question shows a fundamental misunderstanding of "lack of statistical[ly significant] difference". A lack of statistically significant difference doesn't mean "evidence of absence" it means "absence of evidence".

    8. Re:lots of explanations by Dragonslicer · · Score: 1

      Okay, I'll rephrase. How do your explanations account for the statistical difference between male and female doctors when the patient is female in a way that wouldn't equally apply when the patient is male?

    9. Re:lots of explanations by ooloorie · · Score: 2

      There is nothing to account for. You cannot conclude anything from the absence of statistical significance. So we don't know which of these differences are real and which ones are not, hence it's pointless to speculate which of the alternative hypotheses I listed applies. Women treating men may have the same statistical differences as women treating women, but they didn't show up.

      But let's say we actually knew all the differences for certain. Every possible pattern of differences could simply be explained in terms of patient and doctor demographics and self-selection, without any sexism or bias, and that would be the obvious explanation and would have to be excluded first. Jumping to the conclusion that this gives " greater urgency to diversity initiatives in medicine" is utterly unsupported by the data, in particular since women are already overrepresented in medical schools.

    10. Re:lots of explanations by Dragonslicer · · Score: 1

      There is nothing to account for. You cannot conclude anything from the absence of statistical significance. So we don't know which of these differences are real and which ones are not, hence it's pointless to speculate which of the alternative hypotheses I listed applies. Women treating men may have the same statistical differences as women treating women, but they didn't show up.

      So your explanation is that the statistics observed in the study don't match reality. If the observed differences aren't real, then what exactly are you trying to explain?

    11. Re:lots of explanations by ooloorie · · Score: 1

      So your explanation is that the statistics observed in the study don't match reality

      No, that is not my explanation. Re-read what I wrote, it's clear enough.

  41. Very hard to believe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All medical systems are geared towards their main customer demographic. It is women ofcourse. The only place that has more men than women patients are urology departments.

  42. Re:"Posted by BeauHD" by AbRASiON · · Score: 1

    Someone else pointed out his behaviour a few months back and I haven't stopped noticing it.

  43. I love conclusions from statistics... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    made from minimal samples, presented as facts.

  44. Re:Gawd! by pgmrdlm · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Your wife should have gotten a skill set that actually pays. That is her fault, not societies. I work in a fortune 100 company. Guess what numb nuts. The women make just as much, and hold as many positions or more then men. They don't have it any worse.

    --
    Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
  45. Grammar? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Dead is dead isn't it? I'm not sure there is a way to be more dead than someone else.

  46. Re:Gawd! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    200% Wrong.

    It's Republicans of today who are fundamentally distorting the Bill of Rights with their kooky concepts like how their "religious liberty" means they can deny others access to prescription medicines, how they can compel people to participate in their feigned displays of "patriotism" and of course, how they can be the victim when they aren't allowed to oppress and deny the civil rights of others.

    Sad to see their party corrupted by the malignant influence that used to control the Democrats.

    SAD!!

  47. Re:Maybe doctors don't want to go to jail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm doubtful that any doctor has this concern in mind while a patient is coding. But in all likelihood it's the nursing staff that will be doing the actual CPR, since they'll be first on scene with the patient.

  48. Re:Gawd! by datavirtue · · Score: 1

    Doing manual labor is not a hardship you keyboard warrior weanie.

    --
    I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
  49. Excluding Veterans Affairs hospitals? by AHuxley · · Score: 1

    What was not usable from the Veterans Affairs data sets?

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    1. Re:Excluding Veterans Affairs hospitals? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      VA hospitals are Federally run, the data source they had was from a Florida State institution. They probably just didn't have the data.

      Using VA data might also add a bias that they didn't want to the patient statistics. Mostly male patients, often poorer, etc...

  50. Nice Loaded Title by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No. More women do not die from heart diseases than men as the title would state. Still, to this day, more men die every year of heart disease than women while women hold a a slight advantage with a higher population.

    Do women have a less chance of surviving after a heart attack, yes. Biologically they don't bounce back like men do and typically only get one trip to the ER for it. This is about the only useful fact in the article. I have witnessed numerous heart tests on women in the ER, so that "fact" is dubious at best. But it was a Harvard study from which the Harvard participants were trying to push a gender gap agenda...again.

    One might as well throw out this whole damn story at this point. Much like the gender pay gap, you'll quickly find enough errors in their logic as well as a totally false conclusion that none of it can be deemed credible at all.

  51. rather by Tristfardd · · Score: 1

    "It may be, for example, that female patients are less good at volunteering the important information . ." Possibly men and women just communicate differently. Women, in general, might have developed better communication skill and normally carry the 'nuance' load in conversations. If that were the case, then matters such as heart attacks might distract them enough to drop the load for the moment. Most of the male doctors, having never learned the skill, fall down when they need to pick it up.

    1. Re:rather by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Incredibly sexist reasoning you've got there.

      Of course I'm sure it's not real sexism because punching up and prejudice + power or some bullshit (as if prejudice wasn't just as bad). Go to sleep tonight knowing you're a piece of shit.

  52. I think female doctors are better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's weird, but I'm a guy and I like female doctors. I've had male and female doctors as my PCP, and generally speaking the female doctors I just felt were more efficient and I could open up to, and they generally found my problem and gave me the right treatment. If i need to pick a doctor these days, I usually go with a female one.

    I also know a few people who've been through med school as doctors, including several cardiologists. I will say this: somehow this doesn't surprise me. The guys who went into cardiology, there's just something wrong. THey say it's about saving lives, but it somehow rings hollow. It doesn't help that cardiology is the second highest paying specialty in medicine, and that specialists generally work a 9 to 5 job. It just seems that the men I know who went into cardiology are looking for the prestige, whereas the women I know are actually trying to help. Admittedly that's a small data set as it's just a few people and thus anecdotal, but it's enough to make me trust female doctors more than male doctors.

  53. Stress by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Stress is a significant factor in heart conditions, it seems more likely that this is a psychological issue: It doesn't seem unreasonable that female patients might be more comfortable interacting with a female doctor - I don't think it's possible to even call that sexists, sometimes there are just same sex preferences when it comes to professions involving the body.

  54. I've known this for some time by rickb928 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A partner of mine suffered from agoraphobia terribly, sometimes suffering anxiety and tachycardia with HR over 220 for extended periods. Counseling, medication, nothing seemed to be effective, and she was a highly-skilled RN, just adding to her frustration. It ruined our relationship long before it became so debilitating she was considering changing her career.

    One attack landed her in the ER and in front of the new-in-town cardiologist fresh from residency in a well-known hospital. According to the ER nurse he took a two minute look at the EKG, ordered tests stat, another two minute read, and was on the phone back to his residency hospital, booking air evac, and sending her to his mentor.

    She had a conduction defect. Not merely undetected for her entire life, but actually ruled out by more than one cardiologist previously, certain she was just having panic attacks. Yes, this caused a few uncomfortable discussions, and this fresh new cardiologist left the area and joined a big-city practice, for he had stumbled into a nice, quiet city that loved its doctors, and did not appreciate having them called out as having missed one diagnosis.

    Why? Well, first, women were once considered 'hysterical' beings, prone to problems that were psychological and not physical. This is hard to overcome, even generations later. And much heart disease is, even today, considered a male problem, as if women all eat well, suffer less stress, and are not physically active.

    How many have died needlessly?

    --
    deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    1. Re:I've known this for some time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Give me a fucking break. For every story you can tell about the evil patriarchy needlessly victimizing women, I can tell you about male and female doctors both dismissing male patient complaints in the same fashion. I almost lost a kidney because of their idiocy. Just because people are morons does not mean there is some grand conspiracy against you or some other class of people you need to be victimized to justify your world view.

    2. Re:I've known this for some time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Women are STILL hysterical, and they ARE prone to problems that are psychological and not physical.

    3. Re:I've known this for some time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How many have died needlessly?

      From TFA: 2 in 500,000 patients did not live as long as they might have.

    4. Re:I've known this for some time by kackle · · Score: 1

      I suffered a lifting injury that supposedly gave me a hiatal hernia (stomach). A hiatal hernia can irritate the vagus nerve, causing it to malfunction. The vagus nerve is responsible for many functions, including keeping the heart rate low/normal. Ever since the injury, I suffer from anxiety attacks and have caused my heart rate to spike just by swallowing something hard (candy), as it seemingly puts further pressure on that nerve as the hard food goes down into the stomach.

      There have been studies showing that simple abdominal massages can alleviate seemingly unrelated things like atrial fibrillation - I presume this nerve to be a source of such issues.

      Since such a concept is not wholly embraced by the medical community at large, I wonder whether your partner has such trouble. And, to the article, perhaps women, with their extra abdominal organs, are more prone to such nerve impingement and the related fantastic symptoms, with which male doctors may be less familiar.

    5. Re:I've known this for some time by rickb928 · · Score: 1

      She went through surgery, repaired the conduction issue, and has had more than 20 years symptom free.

      --
      deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    6. Re:I've known this for some time by kackle · · Score: 1

      Well that's good. Thanks for the reply.

  55. Amazing statistics by mi · · Score: 1

    The study doesn't jump to conclusions

    Well, that's a relief... it is amazing, what insights can be gained from statistics, once you remove the shackles and the blinds imposed by the political correctness.

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
  56. too many confounding effects by XXongo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'd like to see better statistics. On average, a first heart attack strikes men at age 65; women, 72. A 72 year old is simply more likely to die of a heart attack than a 65 year old one; age matters. There's no surprise that women are more likely to die, and although women are more likely to die of their heart attack, men still, on the average, die earlier of heart attacks.

    The difference between male and female doctors is interesting, but note that the difference is actually small: according to the article, a heart attack patient dies in the ER about 11.9 percent of the time, versus 12.4 percent with female doctors-- the difference is one part in two hundred. So I agree with the caution suggested by an outside researcher about this study: "Emergency doctors and cardiologists, however, are wary of jumping to conclusions just yet. It is a little early to say male physicians have trouble treating female heart attack patients based on these data alone, says Michelle O’Donoghue, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School who did not work on the new study." Right: let's look at confounding effects first.

    The big confounding effect here is age in doctors, not just patients: on the average, female doctors are younger than male doctors, and thus more recently educated and presumably up to date on the most modern techniques. I'd like to see that effect accounted for.

    They already did, some time ago. Google "BBC health gap" and prepare to be horrified (it's a series of articles written by some dickless man calling himself a doctor) . Somehow even though women live 8 yrs longer, are healthier, die less at work (93:7), die less from suicide (3:1) there is a health gap, a systematic war against women of which the whole medical profession (where women are the majority) is complicit....

    Yes, an interesting point. Men die earlier. How is this effect accounted for?

    1. Re:too many confounding effects by es330td · · Score: 0

      Your post cannot be allowed and must be banned. How dare you bring up facts that do not mesh with the narrative that evil men are at war with women? You can now expect the SJW army to descend upon you for your transgressions. Haven't you learned yet that only non-triggering words that support the narrative of a heartless, selfish white male patriarchy are permitted?

    2. Re:too many confounding effects by Theaetetus · · Score: 2

      I'd like to see better statistics. On average, a first heart attack strikes men at age 65; women, 72. A 72 year old is simply more likely to die of a heart attack than a 65 year old one; age matters. There's no surprise that women are more likely to die, and although women are more likely to die of their heart attack, men still, on the average, die earlier of heart attacks.

      Except that, given female doctors for both male and female patients, women are not more likely to die. FTA:

      The researchers divided 500,000-plus cases into four categories: male doctors treating men; male doctors treating women; female doctors treating men; and female doctors treating women. “All of those are statistically indistinguishable except for male doctor–female patient..."

      If your theory was correct, then you'd see a difference between female doctors treating men and female doctors treating women with women being more likely to die in both cases. But that's not true.

      The difference between male and female doctors is interesting, but note that the difference is actually small: according to the article, a heart attack patient dies in the ER about 11.9 percent of the time, versus 12.4 percent with female doctors-- the difference is one part in two hundred.

      Yes, but with a study population of over half a million, that's a statistically significant difference.

      The big confounding effect here is age in doctors, not just patients: on the average, female doctors are younger than male doctors, and thus more recently educated and presumably up to date on the most modern techniques. I'd like to see that effect accounted for.

      That would be a really great point, except it runs into the same flaw as your first argument: there was no difference in death rates between male doctors-male patient and female doctor-male patient. If female doctors were more recently educated and up to date on the most modern techniques and that made a difference, you'd expect to see the female doctor-male patient death rate be lower. But it's not.

      Both of your arguments have a fundamental flaw that suggest you didn't really read the article summary, much less the article: your first argument requires a premise that women are more likely to die than men regardless of the gender of their doctor; and your second argument requires a premise that female doctors are less likely to have patients die regardless of the gender of their patient. But neither of those are true - this study found an increased death rate only when two variables coincide: female doctor and female patient.

    3. Re:too many confounding effects by HiThere · · Score: 1

      Excellent points. Possibly enough to totally explain part of the result. Perhaps all of it.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    4. Re:too many confounding effects by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But neither of those are true - this study found an increased death rate only when two variables coincide: female doctor and female patient.

      The headline says the opposite, you retard.

    5. Re:too many confounding effects by ImprovOmega · · Score: 1

      The difference between male and female doctors is interesting, but note that the difference is actually small: according to the article, a heart attack patient dies in the ER about 11.9 percent of the time, versus 12.4 percent with female doctors-- the difference is one part in two hundred.

      The summary said that female patients had a higher mortality from heart attacks when treated in the ER by male doctors. Statistically female doctors had similar outcomes for heart attack patients as male doctors with the exception that male doctors who didn't have much experience with female patients had worse outcomes in treating female heart attack patients.

    6. Re:too many confounding effects by ewibble · · Score: 2

      Except that, given female doctors for both male and female patients, women are not more likely to die. FTA:

      Maybe it is male doctors feel less comfortable with female patients or female patients feel less comfortable with male doctors. I don't know that is pure conjecture, but you can't just jump to conclusion from one study. I don't think the article did, lets just hope the media don't either.

    7. Re:too many confounding effects by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Yes, an interesting point. Men die earlier. How is this effect accounted for?

      Married men die younger than their wives. The reason?

      They want to.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    8. Re:too many confounding effects by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Both of your arguments have a fundamental flaw that suggest you didn't really read the article summary, much less the article: your first argument requires a premise that women are more likely to die than men regardless of the gender of their doctor; and your second argument requires a premise that female doctors are less likely to have patients die regardless of the gender of their patient. But neither of those are true - this study found an increased death rate only when two variables coincide: female doctor and female patient.

      The answer is so simple I'm surprised that no one sees it. Perhaps a forest for thye trees situation.

      At the bery least, men doctors should not be allowed to treat female patients.

      The actual solution is to remove males as physicians. Only allow females to be physicians. The problem will go away.

      Can anyone come up with a reason why my solution will not work?

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    9. Re:too many confounding effects by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      The summary said that female patients had a higher mortality from heart attacks when treated in the ER by male doctors. Statistically female doctors had similar outcomes for heart attack patients as male doctors with the exception that male doctors who didn't have much experience with female patients had worse outcomes in treating female heart attack patients.

      I think there is a strong possibility that male doctors are purposely killing female patients. Whether it is the innate stupidity of males, or the natural superiority of women doctors, we have to start eliminating male physicians. Women are dying, and men are killing them!

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    10. Re: too many confounding effects by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If all doctors are female, all deaths will be because they are treated by female doctors. 100%
      Let that sink in.

    11. Re:too many confounding effects by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Roughly 2/3 of all ER doctors (in the US) are men, and we already don't have enough of them.

      That's just one problem.

    12. Re:too many confounding effects by phantomfive · · Score: 1
      lol every single one of your comments is a troll today lol. Did you break up with your girlfriend?

      Want to know who has power over you? That person you dare not criticise.

      Maybe you should have criticized your girlfriend a little less, it would have gone easier.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    13. Re:too many confounding effects by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      lol every single one of your comments is a troll today lol. Did you break up with your girlfriend?

      Trolling can be fun, especially with this particular story. There are some groups in which those couple posts of mine would be a true Poe event.

      But hell, the whole story is a troll, donchya know?

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    14. Re:too many confounding effects by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Roughly 2/3 of all ER doctors (in the US) are men, and we already don't have enough of them.

      That's just one problem.

      This is one of those cases where you can cure 100 percent of the problems by eliminating 2/3rds of the people. This is pretty simple - eliminate male doctors, and better outcomes are in store.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    15. Re: too many confounding effects by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Indeed.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    16. Re:too many confounding effects by mopower70 · · Score: 1

      The answer is so simple I'm surprised that no one sees it. Perhaps a forest for thye trees situation.

      At the bery least, men doctors should not be allowed to treat female patients.

      The actual solution is to remove males as physicians. Only allow females to be physicians. The problem will go away.

      Can anyone come up with a reason why my solution will not work?

      Yeah, I can come up with a great reason why it wouldn't work, and if you'd approached the article without your obvious bias, so would you. You seem to be gleefully glossing over this little tidbit FTFA:

      "The more female colleagues a male emergency physician had, the more likely his female patients were to survive as well."

      Women do equally well with men and women patients precisely BECAUSE they have so many male colleagues. Yours is typical modern feminist thinking: it's only a problem if it's happening to women. Removing men from being physicians will eventually make women just as bad at treating men as men are currently at treating women. The solution isn't reducing the number of male physicians, but increasing the number of their female colleagues.

    17. Re:too many confounding effects by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Women do equally well with men and women patients precisely BECAUSE they have so many male colleagues. Yours is typical modern feminist thinking: it's only a problem if it's happening to women. Removing men from being physicians will eventually make women just as bad at treating men as men are currently at treating women. The solution isn't reducing the number of male physicians, but increasing the number of their female colleagues.

      Gee, some times I can't write sarcastically enough. Looks like you've been Poe'd.

      Look, the whole article in here is a troll job, so I was adding to the trolling. And Poe's Law tells us that at a certain point of ridiculousness , sarcasm becomes indistinguishable from what people with extreme views would write.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  57. Semantics by Krakadoom · · Score: 1

    Surely women don't die more. May more often, though :-p

  58. Re:Gawd! by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    Guess which society was that? Athens. The city state, that is. Yes, the fathers of democracy.

    You mean supposedly democratic oligarchy. You had to be a racially-privileged male landowner to have a vote. They had an upper social class that was in charge of everything. Sound familiar?

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  59. Re:Maybe doctors don't want to go to jail by skovnymfe · · Score: 1

    Oh, well that spoils my idea. Also now I actually bother to run the scenario, people arriving at an ER with a heart attack will, presumably, usually be either elderly or have weight/heart related issues, so attractive women being uppity probably wouldn't happen that often. They'd most likely also arrive by ambulance, in a collapsed state; so what I'm thinking here now, could be some kind of mother issue perhaps? Male doctors have a harder time fixing up elderly women, to a degree of so many % because they have mother issues?

  60. Re:Gawd! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I am ashamed of myself, that I missed that transformation for many years (yes, I did have horrendous personal problems so I let everything else slide, including political analysis, but still....) and repeated for a while the bulshit without checking the facts...well we live and learn I guess.

    Above all you are deeply disturbed person. You have delusional stance and keep discarding the facts. Seek medical help asap.

  61. Re:Gawd! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You could argue that those who are very rich (those at the very, very top) are typically Jews. And that's not entirely false.
    How does that sound? Does that sound like something you like? Or does that sound like a conspiracy-theory that ultimately lead to WW2 and the Holocaust?
    I mean in this case most of the world has realized that this kind of reasoning is bullshit and little good comes from it, of course with exceptions. I wonder if the same will ever happen with that patriarchy hypothesis.

  62. Re:Gawd! by Dread_ed · · Score: 1, Interesting

    "...no way you can be conservative with extrovert and openness score in the 95 percentile range)"

    That you would provide such a gut wrenching and honest reveal of your complete lack of understanding is admirable. Most people cover up their flaws, inconsistencies, and ignorance with savage defensiveness. I applaud you for unashamedly showing everyone your personal prejudice and self-reinforcing ignorance without trying to defend it.

    If only more people would do this, just admit they are an unreliable narrator, full of flaws, inconsistencies, cognitive dissonance, emotionally motivated intentional misapprehensions, and straight out wrongheadedness the world would be a much better place.

    --
    When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
  63. Heart attacks arr missogynistic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We need to kill more males with heart attacks to equal the playing field.

    Equal rights.

  64. Re:Gawd! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In my worst nightmares I could not imagine that the West would come to this. All those years I am here (17), among you, I was worried about the rednecks, the ultra-religious creationists, the "foking banksters", the 1%, the mafia that is the energy industry (oil, gas), food, medicine, cosmetics and so on....anyone can see my /. post history.....and now my own people (the left, don't blame me, I can't help it, no way you can be conservative with extrovert and openness score in the 95 percentile range) betrayed me and became anti-science, anti-free speech, anti-reality for fuck's sake! I am ashamed of myself, that I missed that transformation for many years (yes, I did have horrendous personal problems so I let everything else slide, including political analysis, but still....) and repeated for a while the bulshit without checking the facts...well we live and learn I guess.

    This is the classic sign of a false critic. You are trying so hard to try to make yourself out to be a genuine and verifiable source that you aren't believable.

    The fact is, the same accusations were being made 17 years ago, and 17 years before that. You should stop looking at yourself as a verifiable source, and instead look at your ignorance. You are not virtuous, you are not anything but blind to the actual lies of the rednecks, the creationists, the banksters, and the industry shills. Or worse yet, an actual shill for them yourself.

    You see, somebody who remembers how feministers, liberals, and civil rights workers were treated back in the Reagan years, or the Nixon years, or the Kennedy or Eisenhower years, just sees you doing the same thing over and over again. And people who look back in history can see how such luminaries as Roosevelt, Lincoln, Tilden, and others were treated.

    Maybe you should pick your individual path more carefully. Maybe you should stop diving into the midden for your own pearls of wisdom.

    Or be like this.

    Your choice.

  65. Doctor's motivations by Martin+S. · · Score: 1

    I'd be more inclined to look at the different motivations for male and female doctors.

    Men are motivated to become doctors because it is a highly prestigious profession, they are also more likely to choose to become specialist in something like surgery.

    Female doctors are much more likely to be motivated by compassionate and empathic reasons, the also more like to become general practitioners.

    This is going lead to different levels of experience and skill in communication and diagnostics.

    1. Re:Doctor's motivations by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If this brain dead society wants perfect equality then lets talk about all jobs not just high pay/ status.
      Where are the women who should be working in dirty jobs or the jobs that get men killed?
      Come on girls get you lovely asses on that construction site,fishing boat or do some logging?

    2. Re:Doctor's motivations by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Male doctor: I'm #1 in compassion! Boo-yah!

    3. Re:Doctor's motivations by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "highly prestigious profession"

      Not really. I don't think spending all day with dead and dying people is nice at all.

      Why the USA (and the West) puts medicos on a pedestal is utterly beyond me.

  66. The assumption is by Sqreater · · Score: 1

    That the cases are equivalent. The males may be taking on the more difficult cases. Or they may be given the more difficult cases. Or, they may be called in at the end as a last resort and the death is recorded to them.

    --
    E Proelio Veritas.
  67. Re: Gawd! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's not a Boogeyman if it's true. The ramble make logical valid points.

    Why do people insist they women are downtrodden virtues and that men are evil?

  68. Not jumping to conclusions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The three examples given in the summary are all very focused on a certain mindset.

    Maybe women get more stressed when around men and that's the last thing you want to put on your heart while it's in the process of stopping for breather.

    No, must be mysoginy.

  69. Hilarious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This article is slanted againt men, why are the possible indicators all male negative?

    Should be the first red flag.

  70. Stats for lesbians vs heteros? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Also separately for doctors themselves.

    Would be interesting whether mutual or one-sided attraction/distraction plays into it. Having a heart attack is not the best moment to be coy or to get distracted. So looking at the "chemistry" might be a way to get a more detailed view on the structure of the findings.

  71. Correlation != Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Let me guess these were all female "scientists", huh?

  72. Re:Gawd! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why don't you take your faggot (gaping) ass to a Muslim bakery and tell them you demand they bake you a SSM wedding cake and sue THEM for refusing?

    Because I live in a state where the mosques were vandalized and the legislature had a freakout over a utility sink. There are no legal grounds for me to do so, in fact, a judge disrupted a court proceeding over his ire over the Supreme court decision, by refusing to let two parties settle a divorce because of a feigned complaint about Obergefeld v. Hodges.

    Maybe you live in a state where you would have legal grounds. So why don't you? Is it because the Muslim bakeries were happy to bake a cake, and if you tried to sue them for refusing, the Judge would ask why you committed perjury. Some of us remember your heavily edited video was falsified.

    You are a deceitful, hypocritical, bloviating, shallow-minded, shit-spewing, garbage-flinging Right-wing buffoon.

    Keep repeating yourself.

  73. Re: Gawd! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Dickless males indeed.

    I've been wondering why do many of these cowards exist...is it simply because they're terrible with women and or jealous/scared of other men that they feel the need to lick boot heels and try and champion women thru all these false causes?

    Weasel men looking to please women to undermine other men they can't compete with

  74. Re:Gawd! by vux984 · · Score: 1

    "You could argue that those who are very rich (those at the very, very top) are typically Jews. And that's not entirely false."

    Yes, its entirely false.

  75. Did they check for an age confounder? by LetterRip · · Score: 1

    Since the average age of male physicians and surgeons is 49.1, and the average age of female physicians and surgeons is 42.7 and more recent doctors will be trained better on indentifying female heart attacks - it might be age rather than gender that is giving this result and gender just happens to correlate with age.

  76. Re:Maybe doctors don't want to go to jail by Tupper · · Score: 2

    Some of these cases may be heart attacks, but I suspect most are actually just female hysteria.

    Most chest pain in the ER turns out to be non-serious.

    Still, it's to be careful as the serious cases are doozies.

  77. Re:Gawd! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Your wife should have gotten a skill set that actually pays. That is her fault, not societies. I work in a fortune 100 company. Guess what numb nuts. The women make just as much, and hold as many positions or more then men. They don't have it any worse.

    You are just lucky to live in an enlightened country, I guess.
    Its not the same in the UK.

    gender-pay-gap.service.gov.uk

    Are you working for HR in the fortune 100 company, or did you hack the payroll database?
    Or are you just making up facts.

  78. Re:Gawd! by laie_techie · · Score: 1, Insightful

    200% Wrong.

    It's Republicans of today who are fundamentally distorting the Bill of Rights with their kooky concepts like how their "religious liberty" means they can deny others access to prescription medicines, how they can compel people to participate in their feigned displays of "patriotism" and of course, how they can be the victim when they aren't allowed to oppress and deny the civil rights of others.

    Sad to see their party corrupted by the malignant influence that used to control the Democrats.

    SAD!!

    Republicans don't deny access to healthcare; they just don't want to pay for others having a procedure they disagree with. I disagree with elective abortion, so I don't want my tax dollars to pay for you to have an elective abortion. I am against making abortion illegal because there are some situations I agree with abortion (such as a pregnancy which resulted from rape, or cases where either the mother's or fetus' life is in severe jeopardy). The Catholic Church is against contraceptives, so they don't want to pay from health insurance which pays for contraceptives, but that doesn't stop their employees from buying supplemental insurance or paying retail for contraceptives.

    The country is so divided that you parrot your party's talking points without determining the validity of the claims.

  79. "suggests" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Probably a bunch of hooey.

  80. Re:Gawd! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    weanie.

    There's a spelling fail dripping with irony if ever I saw one.

    I think you meant "weenie," but in this case, a reference to suckling from the teat fits even better.

  81. This has gender studies stink all over it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This "study" smells like somebody with a conclusion in search of a study to support it. The sheer number of morons in social sciences who don't understand statistics is astounding. Something as simple as a coin toss is random and yet the probability of getting 5 heads and 5 tails in 10 tosses is less than 8%. What does that mean? It means that even when a variable is truly random, every set of trials will have a distinct distribution that centers around the mean, but doesn't usually fall right upon it. It is not unexpected that comparing mortality of patients of male versus female doctors would show some variability that is NOT due to any difference between male and female doctors. Before we can infer a causal relationship we're going to have to have something better than a result that has deviated by 1.5% from that of perfect chance.

  82. Have they considered the psych/neuro angle? by bistromath007 · · Score: 1

    Somebody with a weak heart is going to be pretty susceptible to things that most people normally brush off. Something that we've recently come to understand is that men make people tense. They don't need to have done anything wrong or have any threatening mannerism; the response is triggered by pheromones and subconscious psychological processes. What would be a barely noticed vague unease for anyone else could be fatal for somebody already teetering on the edge.

  83. Re:Gawd! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Way to make up a rant and fail to address any of his points. Please try again.

  84. Re:Gawd! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Except in real world situations the laws that republicans want on the books actually does deny access to healthcare.

    If you have a law that allows any medical professional or any pharmacist to not prescribe or fill a prescription for say birth control because of their "religious beliefs" (which is happening and has happened) but that person lives in a rural area where there is only one pharmacist or doctor within a few hundred miles and there is no other way for that person to get their prescription then the end result is they are being denied access to healthcare and their rights.

  85. Re:Gawd! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Or are you just making up facts.

    ding!ding!ding! we have a winner.

  86. Re:Gawd! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Republicans don't deny access to healthcare;

    They do. Not only that, they expressly support the idea of banning not just abortion, but their rhetoric is encouraging pharmacists to refuse to dispense medication.

    That's the consequence of their "moral conscience" and "religious liberty" approach.

    they just don't want to pay for others having a procedure they disagree with.

    Nope. They want to outlaw those procedures. Or even just having a miscarriage.

    I disagree with elective abortion, so I don't want my tax dollars to pay for you to have an elective abortion.

    And I don't want my tax dollars wasted opposing a person getting an abortion that's being paid for privately.

    Are you going to refund me? No? Why not?

    How about the thousands of other things I don't want the government doing with my tax dollars? No, you won't even listen to my grievances about the fault system of elections so I'm effectively unrepresented in those discussions?

    Huh. Pardon me for giving little credence to your demands then, since you don't reciprocate.

    I am against making abortion illegal because there are some situations I agree with abortion (such as a pregnancy which resulted from rape, or cases where either the mother's or fetus' life is in severe jeopardy).

    As Republicans will tell you, those are elective too. Remember, if it was legitimate rape, the female body has ways of shutting it down.

    The Catholic Church is against contraceptives, so they don't want to pay from health insurance which pays for contraceptives, but that doesn't stop their employees from buying supplemental insurance or paying retail for contraceptives.

    The Catholic Church doesn't get to decide what healthcare I get, even if they employ me. They are a church. We do not let churches govern lives. And you won't find an insurer that doesn't want to cover contraceptives. It's actually cheaper. Why does the Catholic Church get to increase my costs as a potential employee, or an insurer's costs?

    What gives them that right to impose expenses upon me do to their religious dogma?

    And the Catholic Church isn't even as bad a bunch of liars as the Quiverful movement. Now that group is taking a lot of welfare money. Not to mention the whole adoption business they want to control.

    The country is so divided that you parrot your party's talking points without determining the validity of the claims.

    Your mind is so blinded that you can't even admit the Republican Party's own dogma or how invalid its claims are.

    They are committed to their agenda, and they brazenly lie about it. And it's not limited to abortion, they do the same with immigration, voting, same-sex marriage, public schools, and more.

    Maybe you need to do some checking. Here's a suggestion, contact some Republic

  87. But is it statistically significant???? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Good clickbaid. But lets try a rational test statistic (slashdot = scientists and engineers looking for fact not innuendo). How 'bout the t-test number rather than the simple correlation (I'm in a garage, I'm a car....). T-test? Is the data statically significant? Yes or no.

    But alas, that does not sell clicks....

  88. Re: Gawd! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Why do people insist they women are downtrodden virtues and that men are evil?"

    The very few that do so are obviously wrong.

    As to why, I guess they're so used to exaggerating they forget they're doing it, or if they're aware they're doing it they think that by exaggerating they'll reduce the number or degree of people's misapprehensions.

  89. Re: 50% of Docs are Sociopaths by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What you want or need does not matter one iota to those sick twisted fucks.

    What we REALLY need is a reliable sociopath detector and a firing squad.

  90. Re:Gawd! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sure, nurses have such a horrible skill set.

    Maybe we should just do away with that whole profession, I am sure the world wouldn't miss them at all.

    Was it really that hard to decipher her profession from the gp's post? If it was I am surprised you had the intelligence to even turn on your computer.

  91. Re: Gawd! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nursing is in high demand in some areas and over represented in others.

    Move to an area with higher demand, or find a different line of work.

  92. This is perfectly normal by gordguide · · Score: 1

    I'm not sue about the Operating Room thing, but I do more than one person who has had a first heart attack, had the operation and (typically) have stints and arteries replaced. They all are i excellent health today; the oldest had his operation nearly 20 years ago and none have had a post-operative attack. So the ER surgeons are doing something right.

    With women, Estrogen protects them from heart disease until menopause (typically early 40's to mid-50's) but from that point onward heart disease is just as likely as a male. Women's bodies are survival-tuned so they live longer than males and if they don't have issues in childbirth they have lower mortality until old age.

    But, look at employed females. They have a much higher rate of desk jobs than males. Desk Jobs are heart killers. 10 to 25 years after menopause, desk job, children out of the home, so a high likelihood of sedentary lifestyle and no Estrogen protection before retirement. That is plenty of time and lifestyle to introduce Heart Disease. Add in obesity which tends to worsen as someone who tends toward overweight ages, diabetes Type 2 risk (which will kill your heart if you manage to survive the other ways it attacks the body and organs), and the final issue ... if you are elderly and in "perfect" health, you always die of a Heart Attack.

    Some of these health risk rates are also suspect. Everybody these days in a modern society gets examined by a doctor when they die. Every doctor is required by law to put in a cause of death. You could be 105 and puttering in the garden, and the doc must put "Heart Failure" as the cause of death, because that's all he's got for a "natural death" and not putting a cause in there is not legal. Since women's bodies are designed for survival, it's the heart that gets them in their 70's, 80's, 90's and post 100's.

    This has a side effect of making death stats from heart disease higher than they sensibly should be, and Heart Foundations don't see this as a problem as it helps with fundraising. So you have to take any heart related numbers with a healthy dose of skepticism.

  93. Could it be what's in front of our hearts? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm not a doctor, but maybe because bare female chests and breasts aren't something the doctor or patient would be as comfortable with in that particular case (male doc, female patient), there is a bit of hesitation or delay. Maybe that's ridiculous, but some thoughts are...

  94. or.... by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

    Maybe male doctors avoid touching female patients, lest they're accused of molesting them.

  95. Perhaps male doctors take women less seriously by jwbales · · Score: 0

    This is just one datum, but when my mother had her heart attack the emergency room doctor did not believe her when she said she was having a heart attack. He told her she was having a gall bladder attack. She told him her gallbladder had been removed years earlier. He ignored her.

    Four hours later she went code blue and had to be defibrillated. Only then did the doctor believe her. She survived but lived her remaining two years as an invalid.

    Perhaps a female doctor would have listened to her and administered an anti-clotting agent at some point during those four hours.

  96. Or they don't understand statistics by thesupraman · · Score: 2

    Actually it's much simpler than that.
    Their claim that their groups seperate out other infractions is not even basically correct.
    All it takes is two biases.
    For example if women having attacks are more likely to die (which they are add women tend to have them later in life) and male doctors are more likely to be given more difficult cases (which they are, as they tend to be more senior due to a longer time in the system) then we would see exactly this distribution.

    How on earth a statistical paper can be published without even a basic understanding of statistics is ridiculous.
    Of course the reason it can be is it's conclusion is politically motivated and happily accepted of course.

    But it is not science.

    1. Re:Or they don't understand statistics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Agree to that. Their math is basically bullshit, sliced and diced with no method other than to project a preconceived notion. Why don't they review these papers at all?

  97. What's next? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Articles about OBGYNs, weddings, & baby showers? What's with these posts about female shit? Take it to another site, please.

  98. Re:Gawd! by shaitand · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    "Being a man doesn't magically make your life harder or more oppressed."

    It does when the burden of proof has shifted away from reasonable doubt if you are falsely accused of rape. It does if you are institutionally disadvantaged with equal qualifications for education admissions, scholarships, and employment. It certainly does when women who hate each other will band together like blood sisters on a war path if you accidentally said something that they've decided based on subjective and arbitrary criteria somehow slights women while men are instinctively loaners.

    Men had the overt power in our society but the person in the top seat rarely is actually the most powerful person, the people who whisper in their ear and make them think things are their idea has the power and that was always women. It's like the "problem" of women in IT... women are being discriminated against because... survey after survey shows they think tech is boring? Why exactly do we need every group to match up with some diversity profile, if women tend to prefer to biology and men prefer computing... why is that so terrible? Men and women should on the whole be treated with equal respect and have equal opportunity but this isn't like race which is entirely artificial, men and women are biologically different and their gender roles were mostly defined by the elders of both genders over time.

  99. Re:Gawd! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He didn't actually say what career or skill set his wife possessed, but it's nice to see how you automatically assume the fault must lie with her. There's a phrase for this, it's called the "just world fallacy."

  100. Re:Misogynist Article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I see you are planning a remake of "Springtime for Hitler".

  101. Re: Gawd! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Gender pay Gap is ridiculous. The Gap doesn't take into account the age and time within the company at all. Come back with some real statistics

  102. My words are the best! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah, well, your "president" doesn't understand what the word "collusion" means, so kindly fuck right off.

  103. Re:"Posted by BeauHD" by AbRASiON · · Score: 1

    I can't remember it, I'm not a stalker, I just googled.

  104. slight tendency by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Perhaps there is just the slightest tendency to give tougher problems to the older doctors. They happen to be male in this study. Or just massage the data until it fits your initial hypothesis.

  105. But how can we say make and female? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I thought gender was a spectrum and a construct? Shows how dumb and dangerous the gender is a construct idea is.

  106. Statistics [Re:too many confounding effects] by XXongo · · Score: 1

    I'd like to see better statistics. On average, a first heart attack strikes men at age 65; women, 72. A 72 year old is simply more likely to die of a heart attack than a 65 year old one; age matters. There's no surprise that women are more likely to die, and although women are more likely to die of their heart attack, men still, on the average, die earlier of heart attacks.

    Except that, given female doctors for both male and female patients, women are not more likely to die. FTA:

    I stand by my statement. I want to see better statistics.

    ...

    The difference between male and female doctors is interesting, but note that the difference is actually small: according to the article, a heart attack patient dies in the ER about 11.9 percent of the time, versus 12.4 percent with female patients with male doctors [corrected from error in my original; sorry]-- the difference is one part in two hundred.

    Yes, but with a study population of over half a million, that's a statistically significant difference.

    No, it's not.

    Work it out. They say one doctor in four are women. Half of the patients are women. So the actual study population of women patients treated by women doctors is one eighth of the total-- that's 62,000, not half a million. The deaths in the ER are 12%: 7.5 thousand. Square root of that is 86, for statistical variance (Poisson statistics) of 1.1 percent.

    So difference of one in two hundred is NOT statistically significant.

    It's actually worse statistics than that, since they have split the data into many tranches. There are four groups (male doctor, male patient; male doctor, female patient; female doctor, male patient; female doctor, female patient). Thus there are four ways to compare one subgroup against the average, plus three ways to compare subsets of data (effect male doctors, effect of female doctors, effect of same-sex doctor)-- seven possible comparisons to check against the null hypothesis. Statistically, that's only four degrees of freedom (because the comparisons have overlap)-- but still, you have four times higher possibility of false positive, and thus need four times higher statistical significance to pull signal out of the noise.

    (This xkcd is a primer on why multiple comparisons in a group increase the possibility of false positive: https://xkcd.com/882/ ).

    The big confounding effect here is age in doctors, not just patients: on the average, female doctors are younger than male doctors, and thus more recently educated and presumably up to date on the most modern techniques. I'd like to see that effect accounted for.

    That would be a really great point, except it runs into the same flaw as your first argument: there was no difference in death rates between male doctors-male patient and female doctor-male patient. If female doctors were more recently educated and up to date on the most modern techniques and that made a difference, you'd expect to see the female doctor-male patient death rate be lower. But it's not. Both of your arguments have a fundamental flaw that suggest you didn't really read the article summary, much less the article: your first argument requires a premise that women are more likely to die than men regardless of the gender of their doctor; and your second argument requires a premise that female doctors are less likely to have patients die regardless of the gender of their patient. But neither of those are true - this study found an increased death rate only when two variables coincide: female doctor and female patient.

    Your point would be interesting if the statistics were convincing, but they're not.

    The statistics would have to be much more convincing for your analysis to hold, since if the older patient eff

  107. Re: Gawd! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Protip: race isn't entirely artificial. Racists overstate differences with the effect of disparaging other races, which is wrong, but differences most certainly *do* exist.

    How society likes to gloss over this, as of late, is a problem â" and it is creating/will create more problems as time goes on unless this is acknowledged.

  108. Re:Gawd! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm sure I could dig up some lists on the internet that either cherrypick information to prove that point or otherwise argue that a disproportionate large amount among the richest people on this planet are of Hebrew ethnicity if you consider how tiny Hebrew ethnicity is in relation to the entire world population. But since I think this kind of reasoning is bullshit in the first place, I'm not going to do this.
    The point being that argumentation like that in itself is flawed. It's based on an association fallacy that postulates that there must be some grand conspiracy working in the background among people who share certain attributes. On top of that it's about attributes that people don't even choose, but are born into. Therefore I think it's perfectly along the lines of the patriarchy hypothesis. Pretty sexist if you ask me. But by distinguishing gender from biological sex they found their loophole. With this people now actually have a choice whether they identify as male (which is the patriarchy) or as anything else, which presumably is safe, because it's a victim of patriarchy as well. Cognitive dissonance averted!

  109. Re: Gawd! by shaitand · · Score: 2

    Okay, prove it, pick a race and provide a fixed definition without resorting to subjective identification by oneself or others... 1. 2. 3 go.

    You'll fail. There are things we tend to group with loose general and incorrect perceptions of the definition of a race that are real, things like national or regional origin and culture; as well as common highly visible traits like skin color, eye shape, dna ancestry, etc. None of these define a race and at this point the genetics and nationalities are so blended in our society that if they once did it no longer matters. The truth is we have sets of characteristics we tend to lump under race categories and people just go along with what everyone around them has said when they grew up.

    Legally your race is defined by self-identification because we have no way to define it. Right now we play so fast and loose with that word that it is meaningless. There are certain medical factors that go along with genetic race but the utility of considering that is no different than screening for any of the millions of genetic illnesses that don't have a high correlation to racial identification. The DNA ancestry and culture angle is highly in congruent with the way most are defining these things. For example here in the states everyone who is black is treated like a former slave and those who are former slaves are that this point genetically as much or more like their slave owner ancestors than their slave ancestors and you can't from a genetic standpoint claim one more than the other. Almost every disadvantage associated with being one of them that can actually objectively be proven can be solved in a single generation by moving outside of neighborhoods that group others with the same label together, integrating with general american culture, and hard work. In other words, those problems have to do with neighborhoods and cultures and not genetic history.

  110. Re:Gawd! by laie_techie · · Score: 1

    Republicans don't deny access to healthcare;

    They do.

    Please read the sources instead of parroting your party's talking points. South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster partially defunded Planned Parenthood. He didn't defund the entire budget because doing so would keep 700k women and children from getting prescriptions through Medicaid. This is in line with what I said. Republicans don't want to spend tax dollars on things they morally disagree with, but allow individuals to pay for the procedures themselves.

    Not only that, they expressly support the idea of banning not just abortion, but their rhetoric is encouraging pharmacists to refuse to dispense medication.

    That's the consequence of their "moral conscience" and "religious liberty" approach.

    Again, read the source. There are a lot of slippery words such as "could be interpreted". On top of that remember that not all Republicans agree 100% on all issues. As to the "Day After" pill, it's basically a do-it-yourself-at-home abortion. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We allow contraceptives, but view elective abortion and the day after pill as sinful in most cases. You chose to have sex. You knew the possibility of a pregnancy. Even condoms fail about 1% of the time. Now live with the consequences of your choice.

    they just don't want to pay for others having a procedure they disagree with.

    Nope. They want to outlaw those procedures. Or even just having a miscarriage.

    Sensationalism! You are being dishonest here. Read the article you linked to from Elle. The proposal would "penalize abusers for causing miscarriages". I like the phrases in Portuguese better than English, so I'll use them here. What we call miscarriage in English is a "spontaneous abortion" in Portuguese. This phrase better shows that it's the woman's body recognizing that something's wrong with the pregnancy and spontaneously terminates the pregnancy and expels the embryo / fetus (depends on stage of development). Under the proposal, inducing an abortion would be criminal. Again, different factions within the party want different things.

    I disagree with elective abortion, so I don't want my tax dollars to pay for you to have an elective abortion.

    And I don't want my tax dollars wasted opposing a person getting an abortion that's being paid for privately.

    Are you going to refund me? No? Why not?

    How about the thousands of other things I don't want the government doing with my tax dollars? No, you won't even listen to my grievances about the fault system of elections so I'm effectively unrepresented in those discussions?

    Huh. Pardon me for giving little credence to your demands then, since you don't reciprocate.

    I am against making abortion illegal because there are some situations I agree with abortion (such as a pregnancy which resulted from rape, or cases where either the mother's or fetus' life is in severe jeopardy).

    As Republicans will tell you, those are

  111. Citation needed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have been going through the Scientific American article here and the cited source here and I don't understand where the data comes from: the cited article never mentions the gender of the doctor.

    Not only that, but Brad Greenwood, who is cited as one of the authors of the study that brings the disparity to light, is nowhere to be found in the cited article.

    If these claims are not completely made up, there is at least a big case of "Citation needed".

  112. Re:Gawd! by slashdotwannabe · · Score: 1

    Your wife should have gotten a skill set that actually pays.

    Way to avoid the OP's point, insult the OP AND blame the victim all at the same time! Well done there!

    --
    This comment is my opinion and does not represent an official position of Donald Trump or others I do not work for
  113. Re:Gawd! by cthulhu11 · · Score: 1

    You'll contrive just about anything to justify your racism, won't you, AC?

  114. Re:Gawd! by cthulhu11 · · Score: 1

    FWIW, part of the suicide difference is that women are less likely than men to use *lethal* methods. The ratio of *attempts* is I think much different than that of deaths.

  115. By nature by NewYork · · Score: 1

    Women empathize
    Men sympathize

  116. Perhaps it's just a physicall biased perspective. by Arivor · · Score: 1

    Personally, I think that even though Men and Women aren't that different, that slight difference can make a huge difference in our perspectives. I can't relate to something that I'm physically incapable and I'm sure it works both ways. I'm just throwing out a thought here, but if how we communicate with each other is influenced by our physical differences. I know that women can offer me insights on this that I tend to miss, dismiss or find irrelevant. Women can point these things out to me and justify them enough for me to accept. It may be that we are really listening to each other and it just that what was said went right over our head.

    --
    Do Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously?
  117. Woman gets nervous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Anxiety reduces chance of life.