Doctors' positions and recommendations about drugs, procedures, surgical interventions, health and nutrition are not always based on strong scientific evidence.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
What I learned from my work as a physician is that even with the most complicated patients, the most complicated problems, you've got to look hard to find every piece of data and evidence that you can to improve your decision-making. Medicine has taught me to be very much evidence-based and data-driven in making decisions.
Doctors are human animals. They want to be loved, they are tribal, they instinctually favor stories over scientific evidence, they make mistakes, and even small gifts make them susceptible to being biased.
I think history would say that medical research has, throughout many changes of parties, remained as one of the shining lights of bipartisan agreement, that people are concerned about health for themselves, for their families, for their constituents.
My mom and brother are both doctors, and it seems crazy that so many people think science is a mutable idea.
Doctors and patients need as much data as possible to make an informed decision about what treatment is best.
Doctors are human; they make mistakes, and you have to stay on top of them. You have to ask the second question, the third question, the follow-up to the fourth question.
In the history of medicine, it is not always the great scientist or the learned doctor who goes forward to discover new fields, new avenues, new ideas.
But I think doctors have always been either honest or dishonest.
There's absolutely no reason at all that physicians, scientists, shouldn't be involved in things that affect all of us.
If 98 out of 100 doctors tell me I've got a problem, I should take their advice. And if those two other doctors get paid by Big Snack Food, like certain climate deniers get paid by Big Coal, I shouldn't take their advice.