Dunning-Kruger Overdrive

[supergee]

Why Doctors Think They’re the Best

Thanx to Slate Star Codex

Comments

[weofodthignen]

I know that guy has acquired a cult, but as usual I was wanting to scream at him by the end of the second paragraph. He clearly doesn't realize most patients don't get to choose their doctor: at best they get to choose whether to try to get in to see whatever doctor is taking new patients, or whatever doctor their insurance plan assigns to them, or to save the money and effort and try to self-medicate in some manner. Then, people lose their jobs, or move, or their work changes the insurance, and those are all far more common reasons for changing doctors than thinking you can maybe do better. (Especially if it's a psydoc; if he believes it's now equally feasible to get insurance to pay for psych treatment as for a flu shot or a broken bone, wow, he does live in a different world. Hasn't he ever asked a patient why they waited so long before coming to see him?) And if he basically shrugs his shoulders when he encounters a problem he can't alleviate, I bloody well hope he isn't treating potentially deadly problems of either kind.

I'm stuck with a well-meaning quack. But I hope that guy is a better practitioner than his navel-gazing meanderings lead him to suggest, or his patients are worse off than me, wealthy though they may be.

M