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Who is arguing against more data? Even the author of the article is essentially saying “buy it if you like it, just don’t buy it as a medical device” On the ot

Who is arguing against more data? Even the author of the article is essentially saying “buy it if you like it, just don’t buy it as a medical device” On the other hand, maybe more data could be harmful? You might be interested to read a classic article (Bergman, 1967, [“The morbidity of cardiac nondisease in children”](http://dabamirror.sci-hub.tw/4363/be7b5e26e14c6389108fbdc70febc077/bergman1967.pdf http://dabamirror.sci-hub.tw/4363/be7b5e26e14c6389108fbdc70f...) It discusses the harm to children of their parents believing their child has a “heart problem” when they have a completely benign murmur - which raises the issue of whether you should tell a parent there is a benign heart murmur when that information might actually be harmful - and whether that risk of harm is sufficient to override the parent’s right to know. Another example will soon be genetic testing for risk of Alzheimer’s disease - if, at present we have no way of reducing the risk, is it fair to give people that information, when we know based on many studies that such knowledge lowers patient’s quality of life? I think free adults should have the right to do all sorts of things that others think might be harmful - but it also seems reasonable (as this article does) to make people aware of the risks of “more data”, as well as the assumed benefits

toxik 8y ago
I think it's a stretch to call this murmuring anecdote a case of more data => negative outcome. It's more like telling an individual about their specific instance and then having them extrapolate from uncertain statistics and overcorrecting. Acting on bad intel, as it were, where n=1. If you want to argue against gathering information in this way, then perhaps phrenology serves as an interesting example. We know now that most likely, it was a croc. The use of phrenology was to draw a boundary around a certain ethnicity so that it could be upheld above all other ethnicities, and so it is hard to say that the data collection itself was the problem. Sweden is having a similar but opposite problem right now -- assault and sexual assault perps are predominantly Arabic immigrants, for one reason or another -- maybe it's in part Middle Eastern culture, almost assuredly it's a lot about socioeconomic factors, but nonetheless, it is true. The powers that be have decided that the news should not mention ethnicity or citizenship for fear of racist backlash, they have decided that the annual crime statistics reports should not mention ethnicity or citizenship, again citing fear of racist backlash. I now invite you to consider, what will the population think then, if there are no facts to refer to, nothing to dissuade the racist's viewpoint that "Muslims are bad people?" Facts are sometimes inconvenient or inflammatory, but that doesn't make them less true. For your case, I think the problem is not one of information gathering. Doctors should still be examining the kids, I think you agree -- the problem is giving the wrong impression to the parents, or not knowing that it is in fact the wrong impression.

toxik 8y ago

I think it's a stretch to call this murmuring anecdote a case of more data => negative outcome. It's more like telling an individual about their specific instance and then having them extrapolate from uncertain statistics and overcorrecting. Acting on bad intel, as it were, where n=1. If you want to argue against gathering information in this way, then perhaps phrenology serves as an interesting example. We know now that most likely, it was a croc. The use of phrenology was to draw a boundary around a certain ethnicity so that it could be upheld above all other ethnicities, and so it is hard to say that the data collection itself was the problem. Sweden is having a similar but opposite problem right now -- assault and sexual assault perps are predominantly Arabic immigrants, for one reason or another -- maybe it's in part Middle Eastern culture, almost assuredly it's a lot about socioeconomic factors, but nonetheless, it is true. The powers that be have decided that the news should not mention ethnicity or citizenship for fear of racist backlash, they have decided that the annual crime statistics reports should not mention ethnicity or citizenship, again citing fear of racist backlash. I now invite you to consider, what will the population think then, if there are no facts to refer to, nothing to dissuade the racist's viewpoint that "Muslims are bad people?" Facts are sometimes inconvenient or inflammatory, but that doesn't make them less true. For your case, I think the problem is not one of information gathering. Doctors should still be examining the kids, I think you agree -- the problem is giving the wrong impression to the parents, or not knowing that it is in fact the wrong impression.