People are correctly paying a great deal of attention to just how many calories it is possible to consume at American restaurants these days. The New York Times, in fact, recently showed just how many calories people typically consume at Chipotle: But as the folks at Vox pointed out in a follow-up post, in focusing…
Heuristics is jargon used by decision psychologists and behavioral economists to refer to cognitive shortcuts we humans take to make judgments and decisions. One of the first heuristics identified as such by Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky was the anchoring heuristic. I would define it for you, but it is wonderfully captured in this cartoon:
Do you think it is safe to eat genetically modified foods? I do, because I believe that most foods we eat have been genetically modified. Cows wouldn’t be cows if humans hadn’t changed them genetically, through breeding practices. That also might be because I’m a scientist, and one of the beliefs that separates scientists from…
In the United States, the FDA tried to mandate that cigarette companies put nasty images of the harms of smoking onto cigarette packages, images that would take up at least half of the carton. It looks like that effort has failed, because the courts have determined that it violates the First Amendment. I wonder what…
With so much recent news about airplane disasters, it’s easy to become frightened about flying. I wonder if a risk graphic like the following will do much to help? As reported on recently in The Economist, the risk graphic comes from a new iPhone app called Am I Going Down? I’m skeptical this will work….
Gerald Ashley (twitter handle @Gerald_Ashley) recently tweeted a photo of what was SUPPOSED to be a helpful nudge, reducing the odds that people would bump into each other going up and down the stairs. Can you see what might not be helpful here?
People like me, trained to be physicians, have pushed hard to promote health insurance in the United States because we believe, with some evidence to back up our claims, that good health insurance promotes better health. When people don’t have insurance, they delay necessary medical care for too long, and their health suffers as a…
What would you like first: the good news or the bad news? Let me start with the bad. Life expectancy among patients in the U.S. with thyroid cancer lags behind that in Korea. In fact, the vast majority of patients diagnosed with thyroid cancer in Korea are cured of that illness, a statement I can’t…
Want to lose weight? Then what are you going to do to try to accomplish your goal? Specifically, what will you do to change your eating habits? Probably the best thing you can do – eating habit wise – to lose weight is to eat less food. But as you will see from this picture…
It is well accepted among health economics wonks that the lion’s share of pharmaceutical company profits come when these companies hold exclusive rights to their products. Once their blockbuster pills go “generic,” competitors enter the marketplace and profits plummet. Consider captopril, a groundbreaking heart failure medication introduced in the early 80s by Bristol-Myers Squibb under…