[extropy-chat] Effectiveness of Medicine (was: Robin HansononCynicism)

[Robin Hanson]

At 12:17 PM 9/25/2005, Brett Paatsch wrote:
>>The personal policy decision people face is whether or not to
>>go to the doctor and do what he says. People do not face
>>the decision of whether or not to treat a real ailment or to
>>treat an imaginary ailment, because they do not know at the
>>moment of decision whether the aliment is real or imaginary.
>
>It would be possible though for governments to decide not to
>provide subsidies for some of the categories of treatment that
>some people would be willing to buy thereby having more funds
>to allocate to medical treatments that are actually going to be
>effective. I don't want to see iridology consults and shakra
>realignments subsidised.

You complain that I cite studies that define "medicine" in the
standard way because you can imagine some government creating
a bureaucracy to distinguish effective from ineffective treatments?
Doctors already have mechanisms to make such distinctions.  HMOs
also have mechanisms to make similar distinctions.  These
mechanisms are already included in the standard data.  Until
you can actually create this imagined new system, the existing
systems are the right ones to collect data on.

>Your source for the RAND study isn't the RAND study directly its
>(Newhouse & Group, 1993).  Do you have the actually RAND
>study? Can I see it?

That book is the best single source on the experiment.  There is
no other.

>On the other hand in fairness to your readers as a writer when you make
>a claim in the title of an essay or in the abstract of it you are 
>putting a flag
>in the ground and asserting something to be true. Don't you agree that
>the reader should be entitled to expect that the essay that follows will be
>about the writer accepting responsibility for make the case for the truths
>he is asserting?

What you have done is set a very high standard of evidence,
and when no data meets that standard, decided that you can then
keep your initial opinions, even if you have no basis for them.
You complain that I make an argument based on the best available
evidence, because that evidence just isn't good enough for you.
By your standards no one should ever speak on the subject.



Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323