This NY Times piece appears like an attempt to save a 20th century practice that is being revealed by scientific evidence and data analytics to rest on anecdote

This NY Times piece appears like an attempt to save a 20th century practice that is being revealed by scientific evidence and data analytics to rest on anecdotes and pseudoscience. Anecdotes can serve as inspiration to conduct a study, but in themselves they can be cherry-picked and interpreted in any way that serves the storyteller's (known or unknown) biases. The result of this approach in the past has been thousands of people suffering from unnecessary and risky or harmful treatments that bring no benefit, e.g., cardiac stents, arthroscopic knee surgeries, and other medical reversals. See for example: - A decade of reversal: Analysis of 146 contradicted medical practices, Dr. Vinay Prasad, Mayo Clinic Proceedings (2013) - A Decade of Reversal: An Analysis of 146 Contradicted Medical Practices, Dr. Vinay Prasad, Youtube video (2013) - Reversals of established medical practice: Evidence to abandon ship, Dr. Vinay Prasad, JAMA (2012) - The placebo effect isn't just for pills, Dr. Aaron Carroll, NY Times (2014) Evidence-based medicine is necessary to protect patients from the (known or unknown) biases of the provider. In cases where providers want to proceed without evidence, it is their ethical obligation during the informed consent process to alert their customers that they are being used as guinea pigs. The solution to the problem of insufficient evidence is working to acquire more and better evidence. Patients' health and well-being depends on it.