
The Paradox of Disclosure - danso
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/opinion/sunday/the-paradox-of-disclosure.html
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whack
> _For example, surgeons are more likely to recommend surgery than non-
> surgeons. Radiation-oncologists recommend radiation more than other
> physicians. This is known as specialty bias. Perhaps in an attempt to be
> transparent, some doctors spontaneously disclose their specialty bias. That
> is, surgeons may inform their patients that as surgeons, they are biased
> toward recommending surgery._

> _My latest research, published last month in the Proceedings of the National
> Academy of Sciences, reveals that patients with localized prostate cancer (a
> condition that has multiple effective treatment options) who heard their
> surgeon disclose his or her specialty bias were nearly three times more
> likely to have surgery than those patients who did not hear their surgeon
> reveal such a bias. Rather than discounting the surgeon’s recommendation,
> patients reported increased trust in physicians who disclosed their
> specialty bias._

Every time I think I've figured out the depth of human irrationality, it turns
out there's more.

~~~
nashadelic
It's actually a pretty good selling tactic: tell them why you think they need
surgery but add "I might not be the best person to tell you this because as a
surgeon, I look at all problems through surgery"; this makes you come off as
honest, putting the patient before your benefit, and because patients don't
expect such disclosure, they end up trusting you a lot more.

~~~
andreareina
I also trust a specialist in x to know when it's not the appropriate solution
to the problem.

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frank_jaeger
This instantly reminded me of an article I read about medication side effect
disclaimers actually increasing the odds of people trying the product. Both
are pretty interesting effects.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterubel/2014/08/18/side-
effect...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterubel/2014/08/18/side-effect-
warnings-can-increase-pharmaceutical-sales/)

~~~
Noseshine
Since I didn't get past the ad I googled for the actual study (or at least one
that seems to fit he description for the most part), here it is (PDF):

[https://marketing.wharton.upenn.edu/files/?whdmsaction=publi...](https://marketing.wharton.upenn.edu/files/?whdmsaction=public:main.file&fileID=5092&usg=AFQjCNHxMQCTHb_VyK6dlJfnIt3fBazY6A&sig2=NN8Mx-
TfOUCYSg1ViRnwJA)

Abstract:

> We found no evidence that consumers benefit from government-mandated
> disclaimers in advertising. Experiments and common experience show that
> admonishments to change or avoid behaviors often have effects opposite to
> those intended. We found 18 experimental studiesthat provided evidence
> relevant to mandatory disclaimers. Mandated messagesincreased confusion in
> all, and were ineffective or harmful in the 15 studiesthat examined
> perceptions, attitudes, or decisions. We conducted an experiment on the
> effects of a government-mandated disclaimer for a Florida court case. Two
> advertisements for dentists offering implant dentistry were shown to 317
> subjects. One advertiser had implant dentistry credentials. Subjects exposed
> to the disclaimer more often recommended the advertiser who lacked
> credentials. Women and less-educated subjects were particularly prone to
> this error. In addition, subjects drew false and damaging inferences about
> the credentialed dentist.

~~~
tamana
In other words, the disclaimers were confusingly worded, perhaps due to
regulatory capture.

Similarly, cigarette warning labels in USA are designed to be hard to read (A
PARAGRAPH OF SKINNY ALL CAPS) due to industry lobbying.

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tetrep
I wonder if this extends to sharing your reasoning for a decision with others.
It seems like it might be a sort of social cognitive offload, where we feel
more sure with our decisions when we expose our reasoning to other, even
unqualified, people. I think hearing no rebuttal gives us assurance, much like
someone positively encouraging you to do something does, even if the
encourager has no idea the difficulty of the task,your qualifications, etc.

This seems especially relevant for bias disclosure, because now we feel better
giving in to those biases because we've issued warnings.

Anecdotally, I see this used in social situations where someone is not
particularly nice, who then unapologetically informs everyone that they are
"not nice" or "mean" as if it excuses the behavior.

~~~
kordless
Biases are blaming statements. Saying someone is "not nice" is a blaming
statement against a person directly...to avoid the disruption caused by the
words which elicited the statement to begin with. Blaming someone else's
character to diminish the importance of the statement they made is a well
known and oft wielded bias.

Biases work because they allow a steady state of cognitive dissonance to
occur. It's only when dissonance is disturbed that it begins to chew up
resources - both internally and externally. How much effort should be going
into picking a good president here in the US and what is limiting our ability
to change things for the better? That's a HARD question to answer and requires
a lot of work from a lot of different people to get even reasonably close to
breaking the dissonance in society for the better.

Seems a far more efficient solution to let things randomly break at a point
for a nice, yet messy, reset on societal cognition.

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mathattack
In business, the standard of conflict-of-interest is "Did You Disclose"? So
LendingClub's CEO got in trouble for not disclosing the conflict of interest.
Achieving financial benefit on the side wasn't the issue - lack of disclosure
was.

This actually creates worse governance issues, because you can't trust that
execs will do the right thing. You can only trust that they'll tell the board,
who may have conflicts of their own.

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joe_the_user
It seems like the paradox very much involves the problem of a person disclose
their bias. This results in all sort of paradoxical problems of someone
wanting maintain social relations, someone taking a disclosure as part of
social signaling in general, etc.

A relatively simple way around this, I could suggest, is having someone else
make bias disclosures and indeed requiring someone else to make those
disclosures.

