minusdash comments on MetaMed: Evidence-Based Healthcare - Less Wrong
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Comments (191)
Doctors are not licensed to "handle and aggregate" research results. They are licensed to treat people as best as they can and keeping up with the latest academic research is not a requirement for keeping their license. In fact, most doctors are too busy treating people to allocate enough time to read research.
I consider this a good thing and I say this as someone who has doctors in the family and doctors among friends. Medics are not gods and not even engineers -- an attempt to make medicine "evidence-based" is proceeding over a lot of screaming and dragging heels. In some areas -- like e.g. surgery -- contemporary medicine is pretty good. In other areas -- like e.g. nutrition -- it's pretty bad.
And what's up with your obsession with "legally-professed"? Getting a license doesn't magically grant you smarts and competence. There are a lot of different doctors and some of them are really not good doctors.
I believe their advice is based on published medical research which is precisely what you are asking for.