In this paper Professor Sallie Baxendale writes about the way doctors’ thinking can be vulnerable to bias when assessing the evidence base for treatments, and make us ignore or downplay evidence that the treatments we are using may not be effective, or may even be harmful.
“Rather than the absence of any harm, it is the expectation of an overall benefit of a medical treatment that is the foundation of the implicit doctor-patient contract. In the context of an expectation of efficacy, powerful cognitive biases can blind clinicians to obvious signs that a treatment is not helping, or may even be harming their patients.
These distortions can perpetuate harmful practices in medicine long after the objective evidence points in a different direction. By becoming aware of these biases and the way they shape perceptions of the evidence base, doctors can reduce the negative impact they may have on the patients in their care.”