Colon Cancer Screening Controversy. Here's What All The Debate Is About.


Here’s a new study I conducted with Peggy Liu, Jim Bettman, and Arianna Uhalde on calorie range information. Check it out below. Liu, Peggy J., James R. Bettman, Arianna R. Uhalde, and Peter A. Ubel (forthcoming), “How Many Calories Are in My Burrito? Improving Consumers’ Understanding of Calorie Range Information,” Public Health Nutrition. DOI link….
With jobs disappearing faster than a major league fastball, the public is understandably irate at the damage that greed has wrought upon our economy. Financiers destroy their companies, and our retirement portfolios, and then complain when their bonuses are less than 7 figures. The greedy behavior in recent headlines has not been limited to Wall…
The US is finally making very small strides towards pulling healthcare prices out of the shadows. Here is a recent media story on the topic. U.S. hospitals are now required to list the prices of medical services online and update them annually, under a rule change that went into effect Jan. 1. Previously, hospitals only…
It doesn’t pay for animals to miss out on reproductive opportunities. That’s why when a female baboon is at the peak of her fertility cycle, her buttocks get red and swollen, thereby alerting males to their reproductive opportunity. Cattle, too, try to take advantage of fertility, with females getting quite frisky when they are in…
Experts in decision psychology and behavioral economics have conclusively shown that humans, those silly creatures, are not always rational decision makers. They let unconscious forces influence their thinking, and not always for the better. But of course, doctors aren’t human. Right? Well, here is some evidence of just how human we doctors are. The odds…
I teach a course on behavioral economics and public policy at Duke University. One of my former students recently emailed me a picture of a bill he received in the mail. It looks like conEdison is trying to remind him to pay his bills electronically, so they don’t have to send him a bill in…