Neil DeGrasse Tyson calls doctors stupid based on anectdotes

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circulus vitios said:
Why does every interesting poster get banned?
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Some even get banned twice.

We must have different definitions of interesting.
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Psai said:
Data has its own pitfalls. The studied population may not match your patient's demographics. And it's nice if a treatment helps 70% of patients but it's useless if it doesn't work for your patients. The end points of a study may not match your goals or it may be selectively reported. Personal experience matters a lot. Data and protocols are for people who don't know how to think.
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Tell that to the doc with Ebola.
 
Winged Scapula said:
He's trying to protect you since impersonating a staff member is punishable by life on death row wearing an ugly grey jumpsuit and black (non-pink) flip flops.
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I have these pink tweed pants and this pink blazer that matches, I'm waiting till it gets a little colder to roll that outfit out, along with super high pink SPARKLY choos. I will take pix :D
 
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No more robothreads :(
 
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Winged Scapula said:
You should get these:

http://shop.nordstrom.com/s/kate-sp..._sp=personalizedsort-_-browseresults-_-1_25_A
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Holy crap, I'm going to buy them right now. I had to get out of bed and go through my SHOOZ collection to find them, but these are my other favorite kate spades:
ImageUploadedBySDN Mobile1414377511.249524.jpg
 
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fancymylotus said:
I have these pink tweed pants and this pink blazer that matches, I'm waiting till it gets a little colder to roll that outfit out, along with super high pink SPARKLY choos. I will take pix :D
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choos. Is that short for shoes or are you referring to Jimmy Choos? Yay for me for learning fashion designers! :biglove:
 
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DermViser said:
His world was turned upside down for a brief moment.
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Lol, the day I become mod is the day the world ends.
Or maybe the day WS lets me borrow her powers as a wedding present

I would make the sdn background bright pink for all users for the day!
 
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fancymylotus said:
The latter. Things you need to know as a dermie. You will be spending all your dermie monies on such things for your wife
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I didn't know so much could be spent on a shoe until I saw the Jimmy Choo online store. You'd think these shoes were made of gold or diamonds.
 
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DermViser said:
I didn't know so much could be spent on a shoe until I saw the Jimmy Choo online store. You'd think these shoes were made of gold or diamonds.
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Ughh it's an INVESTMENT

though I love my cartoon-high loubs the most.
Those, he doesn't let me wear much around him, ha
 
RJGOP said:
They also have to understand, relatively, we know very little about how the human body works. Sometimes there are just miracles. Sometimes, there are the one-in-a-million occurances, and sometimes the body works in ways of which we are still unaware. It's very hard to always be right.
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Exactly. You'll be amazed as an intern what people make it through. If we treated patients as per the way basic science led us to treat, patients would be dying left and right. Medicine is not this clear cut science, which is why there are always clinical journal articles coming out and new treatment guidelines that switch back and forth on recommendations bc our understanding of the disease process has changed. I'm always amazed by these allegedly smart scientists who can't comprehend this fact. That and techies like Vinod Khosla.
 
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You are all misinterpreting NDT's point.

As medical students/interns/residents/fellows/attendings/dinosaurs, etc. we are either being trained in or already practice the art of taking care of the health of patients. Since health primarily determines the baseline at which people can function in anything, we tend to have larger and more easily marred egos than other professions. However, we're human too and subject to bouts of stupidity and mistakes and in fact, I would say that there are some doctors who are not that smart or competent. NDT's point is that this is more likely than a magic mind in the sky curing your illness. Whether you agree with the magic mind existing is a completely different subject.

And, I'm not sure I would want someone who couldn't pass basic physics or any other required premedical course with legitimate and undisturbed effort as my physician either. Luckily, they usually aren't.

NDT is also correct in saying, from a scientific perspective, that medicine has a long way to go. We do indeed know a lot about the human body, but there are a great many systems we don't fully understand and even more diseases that are little more than a consensus rather than a definition based on objective observation.
 
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DermViser said:
Yeah it would be like Anastomoses (if she wasn't banned) being a mod.
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If someone called her a cat lady in a thread she would tell them to go eat cat feces, then lock the thread and ban the user.
 
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IonClaws said:
If someone called her a cat lady in a thread she would tell them to go eat cat feces, then lock the thread and ban the user.
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That was deserved for that person calling her a catlady.
 
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IonClaws said:
You are all misinterpreting NDT's point.

As medical students/interns/residents/fellows/attendings/dinosaurs, etc. we are either being trained in or already practice the art of taking care of the health of patients. Since health primarily determines the baseline at which people can function in anything, we tend to have larger and more easily marred egos than other professions. However, we're human too and subject to bouts of stupidity and mistakes and in fact, I would say that there are some doctors who are not that smart or competent. NDT's point is that this is more likely than a magic mind in the sky curing your illness. Whether you agree with the magic mind existing is a completely different subject.

And, I'm not sure I would want someone who couldn't pass basic physics or any other required premedical course with legitimate and undisturbed effort as my physician either. Luckily, they usually aren't.

NDT is also correct in saying, from a scientific perspective, that medicine has a long way to go. We do indeed know a lot about the human body, but there are a great many systems we don't fully understand and even more diseases that are little more than a consensus rather than a definition based on objective observation.
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His objective may have been along these lines, but he approached it in a graceless way. "Idiot doctors?" In his (made up) example, all three doctors more or less agreed on the prognosis. In this (again, made up) case, all three were wrong. Does this make them idiots? No, it just means that the patient got lucky (or has God looking out for them, depending on your perspective). Which, by the way, there's nothing wrong with a religious perspective here.

The doctors made their prognosis based on the best scientific evidence available, but medicine isn't as objective as physics. And it never will be. There's no way to control the incomprehensible number of variables that go into determining a disease pattern, so there will never be a way to tell a cancer patient, "I am 100% certain that you will die in 6 months 21 days, 5 hours, and 17 minutes." That doesn't make it flawed, just limited. And calling its practitioners "idiots" for those limitations is absurd.

I think NDT is just a giant hater. Hate for religious people because they find comfort in something that isn't scientific. Hate for doctors because his students would rather pursue medicine than basic science.
 
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I'm pretty sure NDT was just trying to make a point about rational thinking... Namely that people look for miracles. The hypothetical patient he talks about reasons something along the lines of, "wow god must have saved me from this terminal cancer!" Rather than the more rational thought of, "wow maybe the diagnosis was wrong in the first place!" That is what is wrong with the religious perspective here, is that it simply ignores the greater likelihood of human error(and not even error necessarily, but even lack of understanding). Not to mention the extreme narcissism (god saved met, but **** all those children dying in africa every day!)

I totally concede the doctor bashing is useless/tasteless. I think he is trying to appeal to his audience by making them laugh. It was tasteless and silly for a man of his intellect, but I think to assume he has some vendetta against doctors is letting your personal feelings get in the way of the discussion he is trying to raise.

Also NDT doesn't hate religion at all. He just hates when people use it to try and refute science. From what I understand, his reasoning is that the type of irrational assumptions I mentioned above is exactly what leads to people denying climate change, deny efficacy of vaccines, and the like. If you ignore the obvious answer and choose an extraordinary one in one aspect of your life, you're likely to do the same in others.
 
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Successful BM said:
His objective may have been along these lines, but he approached it in a graceless way. "Idiot doctors?" In his (made up) example, all three doctors more or less agreed on the prognosis. In this (again, made up) case, all three were wrong. Does this make them idiots? No, it just means that the patient got lucky (or has God looking out for them, depending on your perspective). Which, by the way, there's nothing wrong with a religious perspective here.

The doctors made their prognosis based on the best scientific evidence available, but medicine isn't as objective as physics. And it never will be. There's no way to control the incomprehensible number of variables that go into determining a disease pattern, so there will never be a way to tell a cancer patient, "I am 100% certain that you will die in 6 months 21 days, 5 hours, and 17 minutes." That doesn't make it flawed, just limited. And calling its practitioners "idiots" for those limitations is absurd.

I think NDT is just a giant hater. Hate for religious people because they find comfort in something that isn't scientific. Hate for doctors because his students would rather pursue medicine than basic science.
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Well said. Amazes me how much scientists believe that medicine should act like science. It's not.
 
ARKR said:
I'm pretty sure NDT was just trying to make a point about rational thinking... Namely that people look for miracles. The hypothetical patient he talks about reasons something along the lines of, "wow god must have saved me from this terminal cancer!" Rather than the more rational thought of, "wow maybe the diagnosis was wrong in the first place!" That is what is wrong with the religious perspective here, is that it simply ignores the greater likelihood of human error(and not even error necessarily, but even lack of understanding). Not to mention the extreme narcissism (god saved met, but **** all those children dying in africa every day!)

I totally concede the doctor bashing is useless/tasteless. I think he is trying to appeal to his audience by making them laugh. It was tasteless and silly for a man of his intellect, but I think to assume he has some vendetta against doctors is letting your personal feelings get in the way of the discussion he is trying to raise.

Also NDT doesn't hate religion at all. He just hates when people use it to try and refute science. From what I understand, his reasoning is that the type of irrational assumptions I mentioned above is exactly what leads to people denying climate change, deny efficacy of vaccines, and the like. If you ignore the obvious answer and choose an extraordinary one in one aspect of your life, you're likely to do the same in others.
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That's fair, but there's no discussion to be had when you're trying to make people laugh. You're pandering to an audience based on their own predilections on how smart doctors are, which is why the audience member chimed in with his anecdote about how many premeds he fails. NDT followed up with, "yeah, it's amazing who becomes our doctors." How many people are going to stand up and say, "Well, you know, here's the problem with your argument, NDT." No one. It's not his core argument that colors my opinion of NDT, it's mostly that little quip at the end that pushes my buttons.
 
ARKR said:
I'm pretty sure NDT was just trying to make a point about rational thinking... Namely that people look for miracles. The hypothetical patient he talks about reasons something along the lines of, "wow god must have saved me from this terminal cancer!" Rather than the more rational thought of, "wow maybe the diagnosis was wrong in the first place!" That is what is wrong with the religious perspective here, is that it simply ignores the greater likelihood of human error(and not even error necessarily, but even lack of understanding). Not to mention the extreme narcissism (god saved met, but **** all those children dying in africa every day!)

I totally concede the doctor bashing is useless/tasteless. I think he is trying to appeal to his audience by making them laugh. It was tasteless and silly for a man of his intellect, but I think to assume he has some vendetta against doctors is letting your personal feelings get in the way of the discussion he is trying to raise.

Also NDT doesn't hate religion at all. He just hates when people use it to try and refute science. From what I understand, his reasoning is that the type of irrational assumptions I mentioned above is exactly what leads to people denying climate change, deny efficacy of vaccines, and the like. If you ignore the obvious answer and choose an extraordinary one in one aspect of your life, you're likely to do the same in others.
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If his objective is to illustrate how seeing miracles is less reasonable than believing in human error, then I think he picked a bad example. The patient went to three separate doctors, all of which are regarded as experts, and all of which use the best science available in determining the diagnosis and prognosis. They were wrong in their prognosis. If NDT is right, and it was not a miracle, then there's only human error. Either the error is individual (the doctors each made separate mistakes), or the error is with the science involved (i.e. medicine is an invalid science). Since all three doctors (experts) came to the same conclusion, it's highly unlikely that they each made independent mistakes that led them to the same conclusion. The implication would be that there's something wrong with the science, which we know is not the case, since 90% of the time (or whatever the literature says), those doctors would have been right. So wtf? NDT must be wrong in assuming it was human error.

It may be a miracle, or it may just be blind luck. I don't see the problem with entertaining either possibility. But, in this particular situation, believing that human error is the explanation is irrational. This conclusion changes if you assume that medicine is invalid. In which case, yes, it could be human error, but the disrespect in that assumption (towards my chosen profession) doesn't exactly win NDT my affections.
 
Successful BM said:
If his objective is to illustrate how seeing miracles is less reasonable than believing in human error, then I think he picked a bad example. The patient went to three separate doctors, all of which are regarded as experts, and all of which use the best science available in determining the diagnosis and prognosis. They were wrong in their prognosis. If NDT is right, and it was not a miracle, then there's only human error. Either the error is individual (the doctors each made separate mistakes), or the error is with the science involved (i.e. medicine is an invalid science). Since all three doctors (experts) came to the same conclusion, it's highly unlikely that they each made independent mistakes that led them to the same conclusion. The implication would be that there's something wrong with the science, which we know is not the case, since 90% of the time (or whatever the literature says), those doctors would have been right. So wtf? NDT must be wrong in assuming it was human error.

It may be a miracle, or it may just be blind luck. I don't see the problem with entertaining either possibility. But, in this particular situation, believing that human error is the explanation is irrational. This conclusion changes if you assume that medicine is invalid. In which case, yes, it could be human error, but the disrespect in that assumption (towards my chosen profession) doesn't exactly win NDT my affections.
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Sure it's highly unlikely that the 3 doctors were wrong, but NDT's point is that it's still more likely than God creating a miracle. Human error can happen with anyone, and a doctorate degree in medicine doesn't make you any less susceptible to it. Again, as medical students, we may have inflated egos that prevent us from seeing it, but that doesn't make it less true. It might be better for the doctors to say "most people (or a specific percentage) with your lab results and pathology will die within x months."

Also, physics isn't 100% accurate either. It's impossible for any field of science or medicine to be. Evidence-based medicine/biology is obviously more convoluted and newer than physics so it will take a long time for it to "catch up."
 
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