Groopman on Colbert

Well…he should make a lot of money with that book.

What difference does motivation make? That is just a subjective mental state that we often construe after we act anyway.

What matters (to us) is the impact that the book has on patients and the practice of medicine. If it gives doctors and patients more healthy skepticism, then good.

I spend a large part of my day job listening to the explainations that doctors give for some overtly irrational things that they do–and was shocked by some of the irrationality that I heard. When I began this job, I also became more attuned to the appearance of sloppy thinking and practice in myself as well.

One might hope that he had written a book for doctors on cleaning up thier clinical reasoning, but we all know it wouldn’t sell because, while we all easily recognize this problem in others, we do not recognize in ourselves. So putting patients on alert and asking pushy questions will just irritate the hardcore arrogant ones, but may help those less stubborn to a bit of helpful self-reflection.