>A doctor can't really just hazard a guess without actual facts to base them in or risk losing their ability to practice and/or reputation. No, but one doctor

>A doctor can't really just hazard a guess without actual facts to base them in or risk losing their ability to practice and/or reputation. No, but one doctor might base advice on one study he saw another on a different one. Having skin in the game helps but it is also well documented that doctors might be overly cautious due to risk of litigation and thus sometimes chose suboptimal courses of action. >Of course they are right sometimes but on many issues with a binary choice (should or shouldn't wear masks) that's a 50% chance. No, this isn't a real coinflip. There's evidence for and against things like this, and some people have learned better than others how to evaluate such evidence and can definitely do better than 50%.