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What 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, withou
by JoshTriplett 3y ago
What 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