McArdle on Groopman’s How Doctors Think. I agree with her, and continue to advocate global, evidence-based measures (which also would help the medical malpractice/defensive medicine problem) to guide clinical decision making:
Every profession resists being told that there is a standard way to do things, that a cookie cutter can cut better than their skilled hand. Journalists famously hate the “inverted U” style of writing a news story, even though it really does seem to work better than anything else; it’s boring to write, and leaves no room for individual style. Teachers don’t like “teaching to the test” or rigidly programmed phonics curricula, even though the latter produces measurably better results than all but the very best teachers. Unfortunately, for many of us, it may be time to welcome our new robot overlords.
