19 Comments

Probability equations are "racist, sexist, and bigoted!"

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Don't forget colonialist and transphobic. And they're an expression of toxic whiteness.

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Especially toxic, old, male, whiteness, which doesn't seem to be racist, sexist or ageist apparently.

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Nah, it's only racist/sexist/ageist when directed against the fetishised minorities.

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If the jabsters have done any sort of a respectable job on the aged, then surviving old, white males should definitely qualify for minority status, the only remaining problem being how to fetishise them. But even if you put most men into the "disposable" category and that doesn't work, what will?

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Great article Robyn. It also reminds me of the quote,

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Doctors have no incentive in understanding anything that might contradict what their pharma funded education has taught them, there is also a fair amount of hubris involved, I know better than you, I don't need to listen to you.

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Very true.

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Sounds like the Fed Minister for Environment

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Probability is basic maths. The real challenge is to make doctors understand sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values.

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Whoa there, let's see if we can get them to understand the basic stuff first :).

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I've got a fantasy that no doctor should be allowed to practise medicine without a degree in biochemistry. Actually, I'm not sure whether this is a fantasy or a nightmare which would make them even more dangerous. But, fingers crossed, it really is a little bit of knowledge that is the dangerous thing.

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The Dunning-Kruger effect tells us that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, so it would have to be an extensive course! But seriously, the real problem with medicine is the omission of critical thinking skills from the curriculum, and the serious disincentives that students face to expressing dissent - or even questioning their teachers.

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The reason I chose a degree in biochemistry was twofold. First it would hopefully weed out those who had no real aptitude for medicine but chose it because of things like parental pressure or prestige. And second, it would hopefully provide budding doctors with a tool that would help them think like a medical detective, and give them the ability to join dots. Of course, a lack of critical thinking skills is a serious impediment to learning, a disability even, so I've tried to think of some kind of therapy, so to speak.

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Surprise surprise - surely big pharma is not corrupting the research and putting profits before patients again ! At least Covid woke us up to the fact that medical research is terribly corrupted by money and should be viewed with great skepticism.

1st question to ask - who paid for the research ? Of course, just because it was an 'independent' funding source now means nothing, given that they are run by big pharma lackeys who have conflicts of interest.

Lately, I found that even physiotherapy standard practices are influenced by vested interests who put profits before patients.... Being advised to follow the standard model of care used by nearly all physios i.e. Treating a (non-inflammatory) tendonosis condition as if it was tendonitis (inflammatory) using ice, compression, anti-inflammatory drugs and then when that doesn't work, cortisone injections that harm the tendons and ligaments, would have sent me eventually to a surgeon. if I had been silly enough to listen any longer. What did work was heat, deep massage and stretches. NO money in that for big pharma, so it gets silenced and the harmful treatment gets promoted.

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The silver lining of the COVID debacle is that many more people are much more sceptical about medicine, and are prepared to put the work into researching the treatments their medical/health practitioners have prescribed - just as you did.

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When I saw the teaser: 99.5% of doctors can't WHAT?, I thought perhaps it might be a post on how many doctors couldn't make or even attempt to make a diagnosis based on symptomatic presentation.

I also remembered a news item from around 20 years ago, which stated (and I think the figure was 99%; it certainly had a 9 in front of it) that, whatever the figure, a whopping amount of doctors didn't know the protocols to follow in the event a patient had a heart attack in their waiting room.

I've got my own view on doctors and probability which, paraphrasing Keynes, states that in the long run we're all dead; but if you hang about with doctors, in all probabilty, you'll be dead sooner rather than later.

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Remind me not to have a heart attack in a doctor's waiting room!!!!

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It was in 1976 that a medical professional uni employed friend explained to a surprised me that medicine IS maths. That being so, how could this possibly happen?

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I've never heard that claim before, and I find it surprising.

But consider this: to even gain entrance to medical school, you have to have a high ATAR (or international equivalent), which means you have to have taken an intermediate-level maths course at high school. The probability calculations used in this study were basic high school level, yet only one out of 215 doctors was able to perform them. That's truly alarming.

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