In the Canadian Medical Association Journal in December, Dr. Redelmeier examined University of Toronto medical school admission interview reports from 2004 to 2009. After correlating the interview scores with weather archives, he determined that candidates who interviewed on foul-weather days received ratings lower than candidates who visited on sunny days. In many cases, the difference was significant enough to influence acceptance.
Scientist at Work - Dr. Donald A. Redelmeier - Debunking Myths of the Medical World - NYTimes.com: "Often he works from a hunch."
In 1990, he and Professor Tversky published a paper in The New England Journal of Medicine showing that when physicians make a medical decision for a single hypothetical patient, they favor more expensive treatments than when making a decision for a group of hypothetical patients with similar symptoms. And in 1996 the two scientists found that increased arthritis pain had nothing to do with the weather. They attributed the misperception to the human tendency to look for patterns even where none may exist.
****
“Part of the satisfaction for Don is knowing the results stand the test of time,” Dr. Singh said.
Dr. Redelmeier’s unusual approach goes hand in hand with some pronounced personality quirks. His e-mails, which are legendary among their recipients, are written as lists, with a number assigned to each thought. Dr. Redelmeier does this, he said, in order to focus on the content of a message rather than get distracted by grammar, punctuation and syntax.
“I remember the first time I got one, I was a little offended,” Dr. Singh said. “I’d never gotten an e-mail not written in a paragraphed format. Yet he addressed everything I needed to know.”
****
Another Redelmeier philosophical pearl is:Not everyone has unconditional admiration for Dr. Redelmeier’s work. Professor Tibshirani, for instance, has reservations about some of Dr. Redelmeier’s choices, and declined to collaborate on the Academy Awards study.
“I honestly thought it was frivolous, and we’ve argued about it,” Professor Tibshirani said. He also questioned the Election Day research. “Of course there’s more traffic, so it seemed self-evident,“ he said.
That perspective amuses rather than offends Dr. Redelmeier. When asked about it via e-mail, he responded within one of his numbered missives:
15) I sometimes tell a joke to tackle the issue
16) that is, about people’s ability to judge “frivolity”
17) namely, imagine Charles Darwin 150 years ago
18) at the time he disappointed his father by neglecting medical training
19) and asked, instead, to go on a two-year vacation in the tropics
20) with an emphasis on bird watching (finches)
21) the father was not impressed and thought the son was wasting his time
“Do not get trapped into prior thoughts.
It’s perfectly O.K. to change your mind
as you learn more.”
No comments:
Post a Comment