Writing for the Dallas News, Jackie Wang describes how data entry errors lead to the erroneous belief that Texas pregnancy related death rates were more than double the national rate. Short story: Texas thought it had terribly high rates of pregnancy related deaths. It didn't. Turns out that folks were just using the online system for reporting cause of death incorrectly. So, human data entry errors lead to what looked like a spike in maternal deaths. Like, whenever I make a change in my grade book columns in Blackboard, I always forget to hit "Save" and then the changes I make aren't saved. Only here, that sort of small error caused Texas to think that death rates for pregnancy complications was 14.6:100,000, not the reported 38.4:100,000. Which is an enormous difference. And a lot of money was spent to rectify the problem, which wasn't a problem, but those actions were probably still good for women and babies and families. This article details how Texas had ...