Comment by tambourine_man
13 years ago
It's always possible of course, but from the article:
As he recalls, nine other doctors confirmed the diagnosis.
So if true, chances of a misdiagnosis are pretty slim.
13 years ago
It's always possible of course, but from the article:
As he recalls, nine other doctors confirmed the diagnosis.
So if true, chances of a misdiagnosis are pretty slim.
He also recalls being 5 years older than his birth certificate says.
That's not uncommon on less urbanized parts of the world. But yeah, we can't tell for sure.
Yup, my mother doesn't now her real birthday, and she was born in '57 in Bosnia & Herzegovina.
The verdicts of 10 doctors of the same field, in the same era about the same patient are not exactly independent variables.
This cannot be stressed strongly enough, and yet is completely ignored (or worse, actively contested) by just about everyone.
Most people assume that something that has passed a "peer review" process has been reviewed independently by several people, and is thus more likely to be true. While the people do not collaborate, this is NOT independence in the statistical sense, and thus the likelihood of being is not as high as one would expect.
And the many examples of 50-year old accepted wisdom being utterly wrong (e.g. about eggs, cholesterol, salt, monetary easing, saturated fat, ...) seem to fall on deaf ears. At least from my experience.