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Are you aware that the source you cite misstates the statement made in the opinion and brief? Your source says: ""A moment’s thought should be enough to realize that this claim is wildly implausible. Imagine if 40% of black newborns died—thousands of dead infants every week. But even so, that’s a 60% survival rate, which is mathematically impossible to double. And the actual survival rate is over 99%."
But, the opinion and brief do not refer to all newborns. It refers to high-risk Black newborns. And, unless we know what "high risk" means, we can't actually know whether the claim is statistically impossible, can we?
Regardless, you have no data on how often justices uncritically cite factual claims, including stupid ones, so you have no basis for your claim other than your own preconceptions.
To be honest doesn’t she have clerks to proofread her work? Which would mean either her whole team missed this citation or she purposefully chose more inflammatory language and didn’t care if it was factually wrong.
Again, the citation was correct. The citation is to the amicus brief, and the amicus brief says exactly what the opinion says it does, so the citation is accurate. Whether they should have double checked the original source cited by the brief, I would say yes, but of course perhaps the original source sats that as well. And, I am entirely sure that it was the clerks who came up with the examples in the first place. She almost certainly wrote a draft and asked them to find examples to cite. That is basically what their job entails. (Sometimes, clerks write the entire first draft)
As for the claim that it is facially absurd, leaving aside that we don’t know that, since it refers to "high risk" newborns, and we don’t know what that means, the opinion was joined by two other justices, including Kagan. Which means that they, and their clerks, read it. Are they stupid, too?
Personally I think you are being obtuse. Anyone working in “elite” level occupations should notice that level of mathematical absurdity. It’s a freshman level mistake at a teachers college.
You are asking “high risks” to do a lot of unreasonable work. And I can’t even think of a sample population it could be of. Like failed abortion survival rate?
And I think you are being uncharitable. Because a bunch of people did miss it. Including, apparently, Justice Thomas, who spent pages and pages criticizing Jackson's opinion.
As for high risk, it is trivially easy to think of a population that qualifies: infants born with syndrome X. And that is a very likely explanation: Some researcher published a paper on some obscure syndrome with tiny numbers, and the advocates writing the brief that was cited in the opinion labeled infants born therewith "high risk infants."
Of course, the most likely explanation is that the source that is the basis for the claim in the brief that is the basis for the claim in the opinion showed that mortality was halved, not that survial was doubled, and the clerks should have caught that, IMHO, but my HO might be wrong, because numerous people didn't catch it.
Finally, I find it suspicious, but hardly surprising given the usual level of discourse on here, that no one here has attempted to engage with the substance of her opinion (nor, for that matter, any of the opinions) and instead are focusing one one sentence on page 23 of a 29-page opinion.
Sorry this isn’t in my Overton window for the talents of a Supreme Court clerk whose trained their entire life to not make mistakes in document review. The quality of work here is copy-pasta I need to win a Reddit battle and spend 10 s googling a source. Making sure documents don’t have mistakes in them costing a client money is a primary responsibility of a young lawyer from Harvard etc. Friends I know who went into these type of corporate jobs could spend how’s debating the most minute detail in their work.
Also unsurprising the paper the data came from was statistically insignification, doesn’t reproduce, and and study design flaws. And didn’t involve any uniform “risks standard”. This was just grifter on top of grifter.
You do understand, don't you, that at this point you are agreeing with me? As I said, the clerks should have double-checked the original study. And, as I said, it is very likely that "Some researcher published a paper on some obscure syndrome with tiny numbers, and the advocates writing the brief that was cited in the opinion labeled infants born therewith "high risk infants.""
Though how you know that the original paper didn’t involve "any uniform 'risks standard'" or doesn’t reproduce is unclear to me. I just looked at the original paper, and it does not use the term, "high risk" at all. Rather, it looks at the presence or absence of any of a set of comorbidities.
And that is why I am skeptical of so much of the discourse here. You seem to be so eager to dunk on your outgroup that you don't hesitate to make empirical claims that are unsupported by evidence.
Let me be 100% clear. I do not agree with you. Personally I think you are redditing and in a clearly wrong position and continue to argue.
They essentially wrote 2+2 = 6 in this. The math mistake was so laughably absurd to miss that a likely Yale/Harvard law grad would never miss (unless affirmative action has really gotten that bad). The people I know who went to Harvard Law were just machines at dealing with these kind of things and they are still a tier worse as Supreme Court clerk wasn’t on their career paths.
With the talent available to her the only plausible belief is she just didn’t care about accuracy and want to put absurd quotable stats on the record.
Someone above posted a tweet where people make fun of the brief 6 months ago. It was known to be fraudulent for a while.
Yes, I understand that you do not agree re the broader issue. Nevertheless, the things you said in your last comment are exactly what I said. So, we agree on that. Why are you so resistant to recognizing where we agree?
Again, that depends on the meaning of "high risk." And again, no one else caught it, either.
Except that a statement that having a black doctor halved mortality would have served just as well, esp for one sentence on page 23 of a 27 page concurrence. I would like to suggest that if you truly believe that that is the only plausible conclusion, then perhaps you are being insufficiently charitable towards those with whom you disagree.
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The basis for my claim is decades of reading SCOTUS opinions and listening to oral arguments. I gave just one specific example in answer to @cake's question. You responded with an irrelevant take on how often people cite amici. Jackson's opinion paints a false picture, reminiscent of common leftist confusion about how many unarmed black men are killed by police each year. Your white-knighting that does not improve Jackson's intelligence or her arguments.
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