3 ms·
There’s only no harm in more data if you handle false positives perfectly. Surely, this is never the case, so there’s always some harm in more data.
by seizethecheese 3y ago
There’s only no harm in more data if you handle false positives perfectly. Surely, this is never the case, so there’s always some harm in more data.
- Bukhmanizer 3y agoI’ve heard it’s quite hard to handle due to lawsuits and such. E.g if you get a scan and they find something that’s benign 99.99% of the time, if it does happen to be malignant, you’re going to find yourself in court.
- whateverman23 3y ago> There’s only no harm in more data if you handle false positives perfectly. Surely, this is never the case, so there’s always some harm in more data. That's not the correct way to think about it. The correct way to think about it is whether or not there's more harm with more data than the status quo. Most medical professionals seem to think there's more harm than the status quo, but that doesn't change the fact that you're thinking about it wrong.
- JoshTriplett 3y agoWhat I'm suggesting is that the harm is not, then, in having the data; the harm is acting on it in ways that make you worse off than if you hadn't acted, without considering false positives and without considering possible harms caused by the selected treatment.
- tptacek 3y agoYour doctor may not have much of a choice but to follow up on anomalies discovered during diagnostic scans, so you need to factor in your willingness to overrule your doctor.
- robwwilliams 3y agoYep! Physicians are motivated to treat pre-emptively, not wait and find out. It is much easier to say after surgery: “All is good; no cancer, we took out a small bleb of tissue we thought was a tumor” than to say “Sorry, we thought that was a benign growth and that is why we did not recommend surgery 6 months ago, but it turns out we were wrong—it was a malignant tumor that has now spread.”
- drcode 3y agoYes, our medical system is still in the stone age when it comes to correctly handling statistics (source: am doctor)
- edmundsauto 3y agoThis strikes me a little like the rational economic model of criminals, i.e. they weigh the cost of getting caught * likelihood against benefit of the crime. In reality, having data people are biased towards action. But I agree, a holistic interpretation - including the population level "bad decisions" - is the ultimately correct approach. The caution I would urge is not to allow "no true scotsman" arguments, ie "well it's a good thing as long as people are careful". Many people aren't going to be, which is part of the calculus.
- drcode 3y agoYou are 100% correct in your thinking (I'm a medical doctor btw) For some reason many people will argue ad nauseum that this very obviously true and simple fact isn't true