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Qiaochu_Yuan comments on Open thread, February 15-28, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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As somebody who's had to deal with doctors because of a plethora of diseases, I must say you're absolutely right. (I also shadowed a few and am considering applying to med school.)
I don't remember what this concept is called, but basically it posits that "one should look for horses, not zebras" and is part of medical education. That is, a doctor should assume that the symptoms a patient has are caused by a common disease rather than by a rare one. So most doctors, thanks to their confirmation bias, dismiss any symptoms that don't fit the common disease diagnosis. (A girl from my town went to her physician because she complained of headaches. The good doctor said that she's got nothing to worry about and recommended more rest and relaxation. It turned out that the girl had a brain tumor which was discovered when she was autopsied. The good doctor is still practicing. Would this gross example of irrationality be tolerated in other professions? I think not.)
Most doctors are not so rational because of the way their education is structured: becoming a doctor isn't so much about reasoning but memorizing heaps of information ad verbatim. It appears that they are prone to spew curiosity-stoppers when confronted with diseases.
soren, please don't take this the wrong way, but based on what I've seen you post so far, you are not a strong enough rationalist to say things like this yet. You are using your existing knowledge of biases to justify your other biases, and this is dangerous.
Doctors have a limited amount of time and other resources. Any time and other resources they put into considering the possibility that a patient has a rare disease is time and other resources they can't put into treating their other patients with common diseases. In the absence of a certain threshold of evidence suggesting it's time to consider a rare disease (with a large space of possible rare diseases, most of the work you need to do goes into getting enough evidence to bring a given rare disease to your attention at all), it is absolutely completely rational to assume that patients have common diseases in general. .
None taken, but how can you assess my level of rationality? When will I be enough rationalist to say things like that?
What bias did I use to justify another bias?
Again, testing a hypothesis when somebody's life is at stake is, I think, paramount to being a good doctor. What's the threshold of evidence a doctor should reckon?