The critical attitude in medicine: the need for a new ethics, 1983, McIntyre & Popper

Andy · Dec 26, 2017

This paper was highlighted in the comments of Tuller's latest blog, http://www.virology.ws/2017/12/23/trial-by-error-bristols-complaint-to-berkeley/, as a discussion of the issues surrounding the medical field's refusal to concede that they might, actually, be wrong, ever.

Mistakes occur in medicine as in other walks of life. Their consequences may be trivial, but often they are serious, and they may be catastrophic. Some errors cannot be helped; others are avoidable, even culpable. Steps may be taken to correct errors but in many instances the mistake is irrevocable; the only benefit is the prevention of similar errors in future. Doctors are expected to profit from their experiences, and from their earliest days medical students are exhorted to learn from their mistakes. To learn only from one's own mistakes would be a slow and painful process and unnecessarily costly to one's patients. Experiences need to be pooled so that doctors may also learn from the errors of others.

This requires a willingness to admit that one has erred and to discuss the factors that may have been responsible. It calls for a critical attitude to one's own work and to that of others. Unfortunately medical students and doctors see little evidence of such openness around them. Gorowitz and Maclntyre wrote: "No species of fallibility is more important or less understood than fallibility in medical practice. The physician's propensity for damaging error is widely denied, perhaps because it is so intensely feared.... Physicians and surgeons often flinch from even identifying error in clinical practice, let alone recording it, presumably because they themselves hold...that error arises either from their or their colleagues' ignorance or ineptitude."' But errors need to be recorded and to be analysed if we are to discover why they occurred and how they could have been prevented.
Click to expand...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1550184/pdf/bmjcred00586-0019.pdf

MSEsperanza · Oct 16, 2020

Just leave this here in case it is of interest to anyone who is on Twitter.
I don't have a Twitter account, haven't read the article either.

Edit:

Mike Dean said: ↑

Saw that on Twitter and couldn't get my head round it. Turns out the quote is not by Popper & McIntyre. It's by the authors of the chapter on food intolerance in Byron Hyde's Clinical & scientific basis of ME.
Click to expand...

Thanks @Mike Dean.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1316729502463074309
Code:
https://twitter.com/Dan_Wyke/status/1316729502463074309

Arnie Pye · Oct 16, 2020

MSEsperanza said: ↑
https://twitter.com/user/status/1316729502463074309
Code:
https://twitter.com/Dan_Wyke/status/1316729502463074309
Just leave this here in case it is of interest to anyone who is on Twitter.
I don't have a Twitter account, haven't read the article either.
Click to expand...
The BMJ article referred to can be found here :

https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/287/6409/1919.full.pdf

Mike Dean · Oct 16, 2020

MSEsperanza said: ↑
https://twitter.com/user/status/1316729502463074309
Code:
https://twitter.com/Dan_Wyke/status/1316729502463074309
Just leave this here in case it is of interest to anyone who is on Twitter.
I don't have a Twitter account, haven't read the article either.
Click to expand...
Saw that on Twitter and couldn't get my head round it. Turns out the quote is not by Popper & McIntyre. It's by the authors of the chapter on food intolerance in Byron Hyde's Clinical & scientific basis of ME.

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The critical attitude in medicine: the need for a new ethics, 1983, McIntyre & Popper

Andy Committee Member

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Arnie Pye Senior Member (Voting Rights)

Mike Dean Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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The critical attitude in medicine: the need for a new ethics, 1983, McIntyre & Popper

Andy Committee Member

MSEsperanza Senior Member (Voting Rights)

Arnie Pye Senior Member (Voting Rights)

Mike Dean Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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