Problems in reasoning and learning about error

Article Abstract:

Historian George Santayana has emphasized the importance of knowing about the past to avoid repeating errors. Today doctors are amused by errors of the past, yet similar reasoning is still used. Defective principles of medical reasoning include the erroneous belief that cure and cause always correspond and that therapy is based in physiology. Other problems are a drive to act and not anticipating unfortunate effects of actions based on good intentions. For example, trying to lower cholesterol is like trying to lower yellow bile. Putting premature babies in incubators with high oxygen blinded many in an attempt to prevent respiratory distress.

Reasoning, Learning, Psychology of, Learning theory (Psychology)

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Errors in getting and interpreting evidence

Article Abstract:

Knowing what has happened before can help keep others practicing medicine from making similar mistakes. Assuming current physicians are not more intelligent than their predecessors and knowing that at any time in the history of medicine most ideas about etiology and therapy of human illness were wrong or soon to be replaced by better ones, it is likely that today's practitioners are immersed in what may be shown in time to be erroroneous thinking. Sources of error include wrong evidence, observer variability, computer-coded data, 'vital statistics' and census data, wrong interpretation, and closed mindedness.

Evidence, Scientific, Scientific evidence (Law)

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THE ELUSIVE IMMUNE SELF: A CASE OF CATEGORY ERRORS

Article Abstract:

The article discusses the history of immunological research and the methods by which the immune system has been defined. Particular concern is paid to the conception of the Immune Self and whether the self is defined biochemically, genetically, or by other means.

United States, Research, History, Immune system, Immunological tolerance, Immunologic tolerance, Immunological research, Immunologic research

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