re: Thermometers are racist

OP is histrionic. This press release from Emory makes no claim of racism.

Someone set out to answer a reasonable question, whether skin pigment can interfere with accurate temperature measurements. They found it did do so.

For each patient, the first pair of oral and temporal temperatures measured within one hour of each other were recorded within the first day of hospitalization. The researchers found a 26 percent lower odds of detecting fevers in Black patients using temporal compared to oral thermometers. 

However. . .

The researchers note that although the absolute difference between oral and temporal temperatures was small, this discrepancy combined with commonly used fever cut-offs can lead to fevers going undetected in many Black patients.

So the difference was "small", but "can" result in "many" errors for dark-skinned people

Okay, so surely the next paragraph is going to answer the obvious question: what were the actual error rates for blacks, whites, and all comers?

That Crucial Information is never provided in the article.

26% sounds like a lot, but if the absolute accuracy is medically adequate with low melanin, 26% worse is not likely to cross a threshold into grossly inadequate for those with darker skin.

If four out of 10,000 light skinned patients get an error with the temporal scanner, then 26% worse is only five out of 10,000 with darker pigment.

And if it was four verses five out of every 10 patients, I wouldn't want the Temporal Scanner no matter what color I was.

So naturally, the press release does not provide The actual data/information that would allow a reader to draw any useful conclusions.

Instead, it seems purposefully oblique in presenting info to the reader, intending to induce a superficial and emotional response to the obvious, inherent injustice, devoid of data, rather than dispassionately relaying the outcome of a thoughtfully performed study designed to answer an appropriate and apolitical question.

Or so I assume, I didn't actually look at the publication that the press release references. One would hope a more professional tone was struck.

But this press release is deserving of scorn on many levels. Similar in scope to "Thermometers are racist"