

Why Doctors Need Stories - dctoedt
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/18/why-doctors-need-stories/

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Natasha1
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.

