What Three Wise Men have to say about diagnosis

Abstract

Navin Mani and colleagues examine Occam’s razor, Hickam’s dictum, and Crabtree’s bludgeon

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“…We agree with the authors’ attitude towards fostering the principle of parsimony (also known as Ockham's razor), whereby no unnecessary entities/labels should be posited whenever a phenomenon can be reduced to a set of less complex constituents. Nevertheless, we take issue with some of the shortcuts that we feel they engaged in along their line of reasoning.…”

Deranged liver function tests following laparoscopic cholecystectomy: What would Occam have to say?

“…Therefore, within diagnostics, multiple signs and symptoms may be due to multiple pathologies. 2 Taking account this approach to diagnostic uncertainty, we feel that our case provides important learning points when approaching postoperative diagnostic challenges.…”

“…In turn, this should be the simplest explanation and require the least assumptions to fulfil it. 2 More recently, John Hickam provided the counterargument to Occam. Hickam's dictum states that "patients can have as many diseases as they damn well please".…”

“…In concordance with Hickam's dictum, and as previously described by Mani et al, it is more likely that patients have two common disease, rather than one rare one. 2…”

The perils of teaching medical triads in medical education

“…We must trust that doctors are capable of realising that, in practice, no patient is simply representative of a triad. 5…”