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gjm comments on How did my baby die and what is the probability that my next one will? - Less Wrong
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Yup, that sounds very plausible. Would your unwillingness to give a number be changed if your client said -- as I think the OP here would -- something like this? "I understand that any probability you give me may be wrong in ways it's prohibitively hard to prevent, and I promise that I am not looking for perfection or anything like it. I understand that providing a probability may mean extra work, and I am happy to pay for that extra work. And I assure you that my own understanding of probability is extremely good and I will not do silly things like assuming that if you say something's unlikely and it happens then you're incompetent."
No, my answer would not change.
First, I don't believe the assertion. Second, the kind of work to generate this kind of answer is different from providing service for the client. I enjoy advocating for clients, not meta-level analysis of advocacy. Think medical care vs. MetaMed.
Fair enough. (In so far as you're typical, it sounds like the OP is unlikely to get any further benefit from talking to more medical professionals.)
This is a huge meta-level problem with trying to be rational as a human being, surrounded by other human beings who are not rational.
Organisations with access to quantitative information have every incentive to hide it from you because the average human is a f**king idiot who will make a total pig's breakfast of the decision theory and probability theory, and then try to use the legal system to punish the giver-of-information.