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Critical Thinking in Medicine

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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, identify the category it belongs to; the higher the category, the more likely the claim is true.

Hierarchy of Evidence

Evidence that supports every claim supports no claim

The hierarchy of medical evidence is pyramid-shaped, widest at the bottom. Categories here are not only unreliable, but because they are cheap and easy to produce, they are plentiful. There's an anecdote or rat study for EVERY claim. This is why the health and wellness industry loves them. However, the abundance of evidence in these categories renders them 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 and OUR rat studies 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 of 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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