Mike, On 5/15/08, Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > >> Steve/MT: >> My off-the-cuff thought here is that a central database, organised on some >> open source basis getting medical professionals continually to contribute >> and update, which would enable people to immediately get a run-down of the >> major possible causes (and indeed minor possible ones - anything that has >> been proposed) - for any given illness or set of symptoms, would be a great >> thing - assuming somesuch doesn't already exist. That would leave the user >> to make his choices. >> > > Those words could have come from my own fingers ~3 years ago. Since then I > have come to realize just how profoundly insecure these guys really are. > Several attempts to sell this into various settings have run into > insurmountable people-problems, though there has been no significant > technical problems. > > Steve, > > I can loosely appreciate the problems of persuasion, but, given your > enthusiasm for this field, I would urge you to keep trying - there has to be > a way round them. > > I agree. Please see my new posting on AGI and Wiki.
> Surely, the angle has to be something like a > super-medical-wiki-but-with-professional-standards > > Incompetents have successively redefined "professional standards" to be completely dysfunctional. Doing things the same old way, most of which has never been studied, IS professional. However, acting on new theories with supporting evidence but lacking extensive double-blind studies can lose your medical license, home, and comfortable life. See Stephen Barret's http://www.quackwatch.com. I once attended a lecture on some new research, when the lecturer announced that he was FINALLY featured on Quackwatch. He received a round of applause from the audience! If I were higher profile, I might well achieve the same fame. Note that many theories are IMPOSSIBLE to study using double-blind methods that were designed only to study drugs. I see the (former) field of phrenology, diagnosing illnesses based on the bumps on people's heads, as being a good example of the same phenomenon. You could get professional credentials in this field once you could prove that you knew which bumps were supposedly associated with which illnesses. Of course, there ARE a number of common conditions (like magnesium deficiency, the most common deficiency there is) that DO cause differences in bumps and skull shape. has to be of universal use to MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS as well as the > layperson, (and the layman will still need professional advice on the info. > provided). The immediate marketing angle that occurs to me is: this will > keep you, the medico, up-to-date > > This is IMPOSSIBLE because there just aren't enough hours in a day to read everything that is pertinent. and ensure you don't give out-of-date unprofessional advice > > As explained above, this is an oxymoron, because "professional", as defined by people who are themselves out-of-date, is an out-of-date definition. (and will give your advice an imprimatur in that you will always be able > to say you checked the most reliable source). > > If you wait for proof, then you are practicing 20-30 years behind the times, which means that you will be unnecessarily losing a LOT of patients. Of course, going with the latest information will also lose some patients, but not nearly as many. THERE IS NO "SAFE" ANSWER. [No doubt there may be many other angles]. > > My guess is an awful lot of medicos WON'T be up-to-date. > > Bingo! For example, last year there was a discovery re CFS & how it's down to a > stomach virus - which looks right, and fits the symptoms. > > I have looked at this area. There are almost as many different theories behind CFS as there are books about CFS, and there are a LOT of books. I believe that a large number of these theories are CORRECT for some sub-population of CFS sufferers. The point here is that almost any metabolic malfunction is going to, by the nature of metabolism, reduce the available energy output, which will cause CFS-like symptoms. We are complex mechanisms and there is a LOT that can go wrong. Further, these malfunctions usually cause cascading failures as alternate systems try to do the job, so that (for example) substantially all CFS sufferers have adrenal fatigue, though that seems to rarely be a primary failure (Addison's disease). Sure, a stomach virus could and probably does cause some CFS, but avoid falling into the "diagnosis trap" of expecting most of the sufferers of any illness, including CFS, to all have the same malfunction. I'll bet an awful lot of medicos aren't up-to-date on that yet but the > sufferers still looking for a reasonable treatment, will sure as heck > appreciate the info. > > And if you could work out a super-pro-wiki framework, it would probably be > applicable to many fields. > > Wouldn't it be better to provide a super-wiki that could be selected to ONLY display the professional content if that was what was wanted? How about a cookie on everyone's computer that could select out porn, unreferenced, challenged, unprofessional, unChristian, etc., etc., with separate flags for each of these? This way, EVERYONE could get what they want. > Re the general problem-solving issue, I was groping for an essentially > philosophical discussion [because that's what it has to be] of some kind of > general problem-solving language/ set-of-concepts, such as we already have - > "problem", "idea," "theory", "evidence," etc. I think this is the sort of > area AGI-ers take for granted but is actually majorly difficult. > > There are some MAJOR concepts that must first be accepted or challenged before a meaningful discussion can take place. For example, I assert that problems aren't a real-world thing, but rather a phenomenon that takes place behind people's eyeballs. Your "problem" depends on something that, if you only knew/understood it, would obviate your "problem". Hence, trying to fix a mental issue by changing the real-world (as AGI seems to seek to do) is absolutely doomed to failure, but since it accepts an invalid premise (that problems exist in the real world), AGI can NEVER EVER see its way past this barrier until that invalid premise is first rejected. Reverse reductio ad absurdum methods hammer this home, especially in the political domain. > P.S. Wouldn't medical insurers have the greatest interest of all in > establishing a super-medical-wiki? > > Kaiser would seem to be the PERFECT user for this. However, the present medical paradigm is SO ingrained in their very structure that I haven (yet) seen a way past the barriers. Steve Richfield ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=103754539-40ed26 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
