[BostonCard]

For the next ghostbusters movie, the tagline will be "Back off man, I'm a social scientist!"

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/06/politics/...index.html

To be fair to Navarro, some of the skills, such as being able to understand statistics and strengths and weaknesses of studies, are transferable.  And he is correct that doctors disagree all the time, even about this.

But this seems like a textbook example of motivated reasoning.  Under normal circumstances, there is no way that most physicians would accept this level of evidence in order to adopt a therapy.  But these are not normal circumstances and in the lack of any alternative therapies and in the face of high mortality, it is reasonable to try the therapy.  But, and this is an important but, there is a difference between that and declaring the drug a "game changer" on the basis of this limited evidence.  Even someone who is hopeful that the drug should work, ought to be calling for more data and more robust studies.

BC

[BostonCard]

For the next ghostbusters movie, the tagline will be "Back off man, I'm a social scientist!"

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/06/politics/...index.html

To be fair to Navarro, some of the skills, such as being able to understand statistics and strengths and weaknesses of studies, are transferable.  And he is correct that doctors disagree all the time, even about this.

But this seems like a textbook example of motivated reasoning.  Under normal circumstances, there is no way that most physicians would accept this level of evidence in order to adopt a therapy.  But these are not normal circumstances and in the lack of any alternative therapies and in the face of high mortality, it is reasonable to try the therapy.  But, and this is an important but, there is a difference between that and declaring the drug a "game changer" on the basis of this limited evidence.  Even someone who is hopeful that the drug should work, ought to be calling for more data and more robust studies.

BC