FAULTY THINKING

Abstract

Postgraduate educators in the past have assumed that lack of information underlies physician failures. It seems likely that faulty thinking is as commonly at fault and often due to biases that are part of us all. The correctives for these biases lie partly in the use of the controlled trial and the formal analysis of the decision matrix among other techniques. If as a profession we insist on analyzing and formalizing our beliefs in these ways, we can avoid major and expensive new fashions, and we may have shown to us more convincingly where persent ways are inadequate and other ways preferable-with a corresponding improvement in our willingness to learn.