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No. Consider these as symptoms. A cough is neither necessary nor sufficient to prove you have a cold. You may have a cold without a cough; you may have a cough
by spoondan 16y ago
No. Consider these as symptoms. A cough is neither necessary nor sufficient to prove you have a cold. You may have a cold without a cough; you may have a cough without a cold. Yet, you wouldn't assert that a cough is a useless piece of evidence when trying to diagnose an illness. Why then should you dismiss this list as useless just because it does not definitively answer a question for you?
- zeteo 16y agoYes, but the _list_ of symptoms for a cold is necessary and sufficient. The list in the article is neither of those; therefore, it's at best useless.
- spoondan 16y agoNo, actually, it is not, and you surely know this. People may be asymptomatic yet still have an illness. People may have all of the symptoms of a particular illness and yet not have it. And lists of symptoms are not (cannot truly be) exhaustive.
- zeteo 16y agoIf such cases occur often enough, then the list of symptoms is not particularly useful. It can only have some use as a warning, if there are non-symptomatic tests available, but such is not the case here - you can't lab test your brain cells for the source of your opinions. What you seem to suggest is looking for more symptoms if you already experience some - but that "method" is flawed, and known as medical student's disease: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_students_disease http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_students_disease . In any case, if someone could reasonably check off all the items on the list, but be a very objective person; or respond to none of the items, and base his opinions entirely on groupthink; then I maintain my belief that the list is useless.