BMJ  2005;330:784 (2 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7494.784

Commentary

Can we avoid bias?

¹ University College Cork, Cork, Ireland c.bradley@ucc.ie

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The cognitive processes we use in making diagnoses are characterised by heuristics and biases that are similar to those that underpin much human decision making.¹ Although these processes are error prone, they have evolved as rapid and effective ways of making decisions in conditions of uncertainty and they are deeply ingrained in our psyche. Reducing such errors may be difficult and, indeed, some commentators are sceptical about whether such cognitive errors can be reduced at all.

Nevertheless, some strategies have been proposed to deal directly with cognitive errors, and these merit more consideration and field testing.² These strategies involve what is sometimes referred to as debiasing. At the most basic level, just being aware of how our cognitive processes work and the kinds of pitfalls to which we are prone should, in theory, improve our decision making. This is a form of meta-cognition (or thinking about thinking) that has been . . . [Full text of this article]

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