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Critical Thinking in Medicine

 Blog

Patients are Vulnerable to False Claims

Healthcare is filled with thousands of claims, most of which are untrue. Unfortunately, the technical complexity of medical science leads many patients to believe they are incapable of evaluating claims for themselves. They rely on others - who are often biased - to do it for them, leaving them vulnerable.

Evaluating Claims for Yourself

Fortunately, evaluating a medical claim is not as difficult as it seems. In reality, it can be simplified into a process that can be applied to any claim. This blog aims to teach you this process so you can move past biased advice and evaluate claims for yourself.

The Process

  • The strength of any claim is proportional to the strength of evidence that supports it.

  • Evidence in medicine falls into just a few well-defined categories.​

  • Each category is predictably reliable and can be ranked into a hierarchy (see below).

  • To evaluate a claim, search for the evidence, and identify the category it belongs to. The higher the category, the more likely the claim is true.

Hierarchy of Evidence

Less Than 1% of Claims From Weak Evidence Work

How unreliable is the evidence at the bottom? Less than 1% of promising drugs from the pharmaceutical industry end up working or safe. It should be pointed out, this is the success rate of the best scientists, with the greatest resources, and the most money on the line. It's likely the success rate in other areas is even lower.

Evidence that supports every claim supports no claim

The categories at the bottom are not only unreliable, but because they are cheap and easy to produce, they are plentiful. This is why the hierarchy is pyramid-shaped - widest at the bottom. One can find an anecdote, rat study, or expert for ANY claim, and why the health and wellness industry loves them. However, this abundance renders these categories nearly useless. Evidence that supports every claim supports no claim.

Value the Process, Not the Outcome

The health and wellness industry are not the only ones that want their claims to be true. We all want to live long and healthy, and we tend to make exceptions for outcomes we desire. OUR anecdotes, OUR rat studies, and OUR experts ARE reliable. Critical thinking is not just about bias in others, it's about bias in ourselves. Of all the skills in critical thinking, learning to value the process over the desired outcome, is the most challenging.

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Also, don't hesitate to explore Dr Woolf's lectures on YouTube.

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