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It’s sort of built into the profession: medical practice is inherently little-c conservative. Doctors are trained throughly to practice the precautionary principle because it’s easier to cause more harm. Often with good reason imagine you’re a surgeon and a new procedure comes out that’s 92% effective and the one you learned in school and have hundreds of hours of practice in is 89% effective. That boost is worth it in theory but are you going to risk a few patients while you learn it along the way? That benefit needs to be much larger in the aggregate. This is also assuming it’s something reach FDA certification, etc. scientific research is often a decade ahead of the market any way in any field.

Then there’s also the reality that doctors at least in the US are incredibly over worked and keeping up with a wide variety of scientific literature is just not practical. This is coupled to an increased specialization in medicine may mean cross-over research from different specialities may not filter into your desk.



It’s a matter of failure to modernize curriculum during education, and the difficulty of staying on top of new research.

The lag in education needs to be fixed ASAP.


> It’s sort of built into the profession: medical practice is inherently little-c conservative. Doctors are trained throughly to practice the precautionary principle because it’s easier to cause more harm. Often with good reason imagine you’re a surgeon and a new procedure comes out that’s 92% effective

I wish they remembered that for COVID vaccines, because apparently it's the exception.


A failed surgery is different to an ineffective vaccination.

Surgeries also aren't commonly deployed against epidemics.




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