Physicians, please take this oath:
"When a patient makes a recovery that seemingly defies the odds, I will celebrate the event, but will refrain from invoking supernatural explanations."
Translation: Stop calling stuff "miracles"!
Our local paper recently carried the story of a woman who recovered from an overwhelming critical illness. She reported that the doctors involved called it "a miracle" that she survived.
When physicians resort to the "miracle cure" hypothesis, what they're really saying is:
Your outcome has been much better than I predicted. I don't see a flaw in my reasoning, acumen or experience. Ergo, it's beyond rational explanation. A miracle!
Why not try "I'm very pleased that you have recovered. My prediction was incorrect. I'll certainly learn from this experience."
Let's be honest about our cognitive shortcomings.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Enough with the miracles already!
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2 comments:
I fully agree with you that there is a "pollution" of literature listing incidents as "miracles", whereas they have nothing to do with miracles.
But,there are also incidents which are really "miracles" or if one should label them more modestly,
"small miracles"- which are definetely not coincidences nor are
of the meaningless sort which one can classify "rubbish."
Read my book SMALL MIRACLES by Askin Ozcan, ISBN 1598001000
Outskirts Press and decide for yourself. Thirty true cases of small miracles.
http://www.outskirtspress.com/smallmiracles
Thanks for the note. This is certainly a subject that people will be polarized on. I think that "miracles" in medicine are a symptom of intellectual apathy, i.e. "I can't understand how this happened and can't be bothered to investigate it any more deeply."
At the same time, they represent intellectual hubris, i.e. "My grasp of natural phenomenon is so complete that anything outside my understanding must be supernatural."
As for non-medical "miracles", you can read between the lines.
By the way, feel free to plug your merchandise via my blog. :)
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