2026-09-19 00:23 UTC
It took EIGHT appointments, over $1000 (that's after insurance), and loads of time and stress.
And I raised the thing we needed to look at in the very first appointment and every subsequent one.
Now, I don't dispute the need to not leap to assumptions. Perhaps there really are many drivers of Symptom Y.
But not even *considering* Condition A? A real failure.
Doctors' appointments are subject to anchoring effects, perhaps worse than any single high-stakes reasoning moment I've ever seen.
Replies (1)
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@grimalkina@mastodon.social 2026-09-19 00:26
Famously, doctors struggle with base rates and similar cognitive biases around likelihood ( see: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247373134_Physicians_neglect_base_rates_and_it_matters or https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1365-2753.2001.00284.x ) Really, we all struggle with base rates We are trained to think about population level averages. Our minds like to anchor on large known patterns. But most moments of detective work are about winnowing through conditional probabilities