False positives in medicine can cause unnecessary interventions that carry their own risks. Believe it or not, there is an optimum level of ignorance for maximum health.
Not necessarily.
Rohin Francis (Medlife crisis) has I think a video on overtesting, but for example, if you have a new technology that tests and suspects a tumor, which results in CT scans for patients, if millions of users use this tech there's a likely non-zero number of people who may get cancer from the CT exposure.
"What about those who actually had the tumor?"
Well it's possible that 99% of these cases would've been symptomatic anyway in a few more months.
By explanation isn't the best, but over-medication is not a non-issue.
Then you can decide whether a test makes sense or doesn't make sense, given the tradeoffs of radiation and cost vs. the risks of harm.
In the real world, information absolutely can lead to harm, but it's still all in the response and how medicine and patients use information.
But as information gets cheaper and more common we can develop ways of dealing with it. If it was difficult and expensive to test for fever you'd see people in the medical profession warning against it because it could lead to overreaction.
Another thing I seem to remember in his video was that a tumor is not necessarily dangerous. Out of a hundred (say) tumors in a person's life, only maybe 5 are risky. But I'm paraphrasing this badly.
Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kQk9-KLPfU is one of the videos, however I think he's talked about this more (likely on instagram or another video too).
>For a lot of people, if you get a positive result from a test that a doctor brushes off that's not going to go well.
This is precisely because of the rarity of testing. Suppose the cost of testing dropped 1000x and we could get tests for things each day or each month. We'd start to have systems that put these things on context.
When you have a single isolated result there really isn't that much to go on.
E.g. CT scan shows an incidental, tiny lung nodule. You do a biopsy. Unfortunately, during the process of getting a biopsy, you develop a pneumothorax (an uncommon but well-known complication of a lung biopsy) and need a chest tube, hospitalization, etc. You get discharged and you're fine, but man, that wasn't fun. Biopsy comes back negative for cancer. Nodule goes away on its own with time.
Edit: that being said, I'm excited about OTC CGMs! But the "data" we have in medicine is not as accurate as other fields and always subject to false positives/negatives.
"I'm so incompetent that more data is going to lead to worse outcomes! So let me stick my head in the sand and not measure!"
Imagine if any other profession operated under this framework:
"Ehhh, if we inspect too hard we might make a repair on this airplane that will cause further damage, lets just not do the inspection"
Did you see the 737 door plug accident?
You are missing part of the picture here. And that part is not that everyone else is dumb but you.
Do you think this is....the same thing as a continuous glucose monitor?