alt Hacker NewsI think the ultimate answer is that people must take responsibility for their own health and that of their children and loved ones. That includes research and double-checking your doctors. True, the result is that a good number of people will be convinced they have something (eg. autism) that they don't. But the anecdotes are piled up into giant mountains at this point. A good number of people in my family have had at least one doctor that has been useless in dealing with a particular problem. It required trying to figure out what was wrong, then finding a doctor that could help before there were correct diagnoses and treatments.
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But we are idiots.
There's a reason why flour has iron and salt has iodine, right? Individual responsibility simply does not scale.
>But the anecdotes are piled up into giant mountains at this point
This is disorganized thinking. Anecdotes about what? Does my uncle having an argument with his doctor over needing more painkillers, combine with an anecdote about my sister disagreeing with a midwife over how big her baby would be, combined with my friend outliving their stage 4 cancer prognosis all add up to "therefore I'm going to disregard nutrition recommendations"? Even if they were all right and the doctors were all wrong, they still wouldn't aggregate in a particular direction the way that a study on processed foods does.
And frankly it overlooks psychological and sociological dynamics that drive this kind of anecdotal reporting, which I think are more about tribal group emotional support in response to information complexity.
In fact, reasoning from separate instances that are importantly factually different is a signature line of reasoning used by alien abduction conspiracy theorists. They treat the cultural phenomenon of "millions" of people reporting UFOs or abduction experiences over decades as "proof" of aliens writ large, when the truth is they are helplessly incompetent interpreters of social data.
Patients should always advocate for their own care.
This includes researching their own condition, looking into alternate diagnoses/treatments, discussing them with a physician, and potentially getting a second opinion.
Especially the second opinion. There are good and bad physicians everywhere.
But advocating also does not mean ignoring a physician's response. If they say it's unlikely to be X because of Y, consider what they're saying!
Physicians are working from a deep well of experience in treating the most frequent problems, and some will be more or less curious about alternate hypotheses.
When it comes down to it, House-style medical mysteries are mysteries because they're uncommon. For every "doc missed Lyme disease" story there are many more "it's just flu."