Debunked Racial Concordance Study Continues to be Cited Credulously

A 2020 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) infamously claimed that black newborns were more likely to survive if treated by black doctors. While the study initially received effusive praise, it has since been debunked and exposed as an attempt to push an ideological narrative rather than an honest, scientific endeavor.

The damage caused by this study can’t be fully undone, but PNAS could at least partially rectify the mistake in publishing the study by retracting it or making it abundantly clear to all readers that the results are not credible. Instead, a critique of the study which definitively proves that the results are biased by a failure to statistically account for the disproportionate assignment of very low birth weight black newborns to highly specialized white doctors is buried. A reader would have to click the “view related content” button on the home screen to access the critique.

As a matter of habit, most people who read the study probably don’t bother to click on “related content.” Because the critique is hidden, the study and its original findings continue to be cited in academic literature. According to Google Scholar, that includes 47 citations in 2025 alone (of a total of 766), meaning that even after the study was formally debunked in September 2024, it continues to accrue about one additional citation every other day.

A review of the 10 citations most recently published in English-language, peer-reviewed journals indicates that these citations are not warnings about the politicization of medical research or the ideological capture of medical journals, but credulous citations in favor of racially concordant (i.e. segregated) medical care. Specifically, the following claims feature a citation of the debunked PNAS study:

• BMC Health Services Research: “Extensive research has been published documenting the desire for and the benefit of having racially concordant obstetricians, midwives, and doulas.”
• Discover Social Science and Health: “Studies also show patients respond well to being cared for by a diverse workforce, and that racial concordance between providers and their patients can improve patient health outcomes.”
• Journal of the National Medical Association: “There is ample evidence demonstrating that increasing diversity of the healthcare team can decrease the many disparities that exist in healthcare outcomes.”
• American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology: “Our findings that trust can be enhanced by racially-concordant care – and facilitates biopsy acceptability – supports past findings of a preference for and clinical benefit associated with racially-concordant obstetric care among Black women, and suggest this preference and benefit extend to gynecologic care.”
• Health Services Research: “While patient–provider race concordance has been shown to be positively associated with aspects of care such as joint decision-making, interpersonal respect, satisfaction, and uptake of preventive care…”
• Frontiers in Medicine: “A diverse healthcare workforce is critical to improving the quality of care offered to diverse populations. This is supported by a growing body of evidence that highlights the connection between increased diversity among healthcare professionals and the enhanced delivery of culturally appropriate care to diverse patient populations.”
• Advances in Medical Education and Practice: “Diversity of the physician workforce, particularly with respect to racial, ethnic and linguistic diversity, fosters trust in the health care system, enhances patient satisfaction and the quality of the patient experience, enables the inclusion of minoritized and marginalized voices in institutional policy making, and may improve the patient outcomes for minoritized populations…”
• BMJ Open: “In another study conducted among newborns in Florida, infant–physician racial concordance was associated with improvement in neonatal mortality rates.”
• JAMA Network Open: “Concordance between children and practitioner race, which may mitigate some of these biases, has been demonstrated to reduce disparities in neonatal mortality.”
• JAMA Network Open: “The increased mortality of Black infants overall has been well documented in our neonatal intensive care units. Physician concordance has been suggested to play one such difference in the outcomes, with only 5% of physicians in the US identifying as African American.”

PNAS did the medical community a disservice by publishing a study with obvious flaws. It continues that disservice by not retracting the study or issuing a clearer disclaimer about the results. Unless or until that day comes, readers should keep PNAS’s “editorial standards” in mind when reading it.