I really enjoyed reading this paper and hope that awareness of the
issues will guide my decision making. However, this paper does little to
put the heuristics of decision making in the context of the imperfect
evidence base that doctors have to use to muddle through.
For example the author states that “Homoeopathy provides an excellent
example of illusory correlation.” Based on the statement that “no
convincing evidence exists that homoeopathic treatments are effective.”
Readers accepting this statement would surely be falling into pitfall 3;
overconfidence in the reliability of the evidence base. Firstly I suspect
that homeopathically trained Doctors would challenge the statement and
secondly all others would accept the distinction between lack of evidence
of effectiveness as opposed to evidence of lack of effectiveness. Our
evidence base is far from perfect and failure to recognise this is a
barrier to good decision making.
In the conclusion the author refers to “distortions and biases in the
way information is gathered and assimilated” It is lovely that the author
provides us with a working example, as this paper itself is distorted and
biased for the following reason. It fails to address the extent to which
errors in decision making are due to biases of interpretation by the
individual and to what extent they are due to biases in the information
available to us.
Perhaps a useful heuristic principle for doctors to use is to never
trust a professor of marketing, writing a company funded paper, to give
you an unbiased perspective.
Rapid Response:
Unbiased perspective?
I really enjoyed reading this paper and hope that awareness of the
issues will guide my decision making. However, this paper does little to
put the heuristics of decision making in the context of the imperfect
evidence base that doctors have to use to muddle through.
For example the author states that “Homoeopathy provides an excellent
example of illusory correlation.” Based on the statement that “no
convincing evidence exists that homoeopathic treatments are effective.”
Readers accepting this statement would surely be falling into pitfall 3;
overconfidence in the reliability of the evidence base. Firstly I suspect
that homeopathically trained Doctors would challenge the statement and
secondly all others would accept the distinction between lack of evidence
of effectiveness as opposed to evidence of lack of effectiveness. Our
evidence base is far from perfect and failure to recognise this is a
barrier to good decision making.
In the conclusion the author refers to “distortions and biases in the
way information is gathered and assimilated” It is lovely that the author
provides us with a working example, as this paper itself is distorted and
biased for the following reason. It fails to address the extent to which
errors in decision making are due to biases of interpretation by the
individual and to what extent they are due to biases in the information
available to us.
Perhaps a useful heuristic principle for doctors to use is to never
trust a professor of marketing, writing a company funded paper, to give
you an unbiased perspective.
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests