Experimental philosophical bioethics and normative inference

. 2021 Nov 17;42(3-4):91–111. doi: 10.1007/s11017-021-09546-z

Case study 3. Debunking: successful
“Gender bias in pediatric pain assessment” [51]
Do people have a gender bias in assessing children’s pain? To answer this question, Brian D. Earp and colleagues conducted an experiment in which they manipulated the perceived gender of a young child getting a finger-stick to draw blood (based on [52]). To keep the experiment as controlled as possible, participants viewed a single video stimulus of a child whose sex could not be visually determined (i.e., the same video in both conditions). In one condition, participants were told the child’s name was Samuel, and in the other, Samantha. Participants then watched the video and rated how much pain the child experienced. Earp et al. found that participants rated the child named Samuel as experiencing more pain than the child named Samantha. Thus, perceived gender alone appeared to bias observer interpretations of felt pain (for alternative explanations, see [53]). Such evidence plausibly undermines the trustworthiness of judgments that, say, boys and girls should receive different pain treatment given a comparable injury.

Case study 3. Debunking: successful

“Gender bias in pediatric pain assessment” [51]

Do people have a gender bias in assessing children’s pain? To answer this question, Brian D. Earp and colleagues conducted an experiment in which they manipulated the perceived gender of a young child getting a finger-stick to draw blood (based on [52]). To keep the experiment as controlled as possible, participants viewed a single video stimulus of a child whose sex could not be visually determined (i.e., the same video in both conditions). In one condition, participants were told the child’s name was Samuel, and in the other, Samantha. Participants then watched the video and rated how much pain the child experienced. Earp et al. found that participants rated the child named Samuel as experiencing more pain than the child named Samantha. Thus, perceived gender alone appeared to bias observer interpretations of felt pain (for alternative explanations, see [53]). Such evidence plausibly undermines the trustworthiness of judgments that, say, boys and girls should receive different pain treatment given a comparable injury.