Priors, outliers, biases. Not what I expected. Evolution is not one of the laws.
1 A strong intuition is much more powerful than a weak test.
2 "Normal" teach us rules; "outliers" teach us laws.
3 For every perfect medical experiment, there is a perfect human bias.

This is a type of book that I love: short, intense, mostly jargon-free - the better to grasp the profundity of the thought or the parameters of the subject. I'm going to read a couple of other books for space, and then reread it.

Focusing on medicine, Mukherjee deals with the "ishness" of life: ambiguity, ambivalence, inconsistency, variability, complexity, human error, the fallibility of memory, bias, and the imperfections of our tools.

Why don't we screen the general populations for everything every so often, something I used to think would be a good idea? Because all tests are slightly unreliable. In a very large population, the false positive and negative results would create more confusion than enlightenment. Testing only in cases where circumstances aroused suspicions is much more useful.

I am terrified of getting the disease that my mother died of, which is sometimes hereditary, and planned to get genetic testing. Then I considered that it isn't always hereditary, so not having the gene is no guarantee of not getting it. I next read that a person who is in their 90s and still working, has the gene - for some reason, it didn't express. So I decided not to bother with something that wouldn't guarantee anything, when there isn't much that I could do about it in any case.

The sciences, in general, with their empiricism, confront the frustrating truth that ideas can be perfectly logical, and yet be completely wrong. There may be facts that the thinker was unaware of. The thinker may be making assumptions that are incorrect. The radical mastectomy was perfectly logical and well-intended, but assumed that cancer cells contained in the tumor had not already spread to other parts of the body. The operation did a lot of damage to the patient in the hope of preventing a spread that might already have happened.

I would recommend this to any thoughtful person both for promoting an understanding of medicine and, to a lesser extent, science in general, as well as a philosophical comment on the uncertainties of life itself. ( )

A very useful insight into medicine for a medical student, the way the author describes the medical cases is quite fascinating, had a lot of fun reading this little brochure ( )

Have you ever wondered what makes people orient to their worlds differently? Such is the realm of philosophy. This book attempts to turn medical thought – what makes doctors act the way they do – into a philosophy. Admittedly, it’s just a beginning, but this quick read explains a lot about how healthcare works today.

In this short series of essays, Mukherjee defines three “laws.” (1) “A strong intuition is much more powerful than a weak test.” (2) “‘Normals’ teach us rules; ‘outliers’ teach us laws.” And (3) “for every perfect medical experiment, there is a perfect human bias.”

Mukherjee describes each of these with plenty of examples from medical history or from contemporary medical practice. MDs will really enjoy interacting with the thought of this noteworthy cancer physician and researcher. Others involved in the noble professions that better human health will benefit from learning the philosophical framework this book proposes. Finally, the reading public will benefit from seeing how these philosophical principles, which are fundamental to medical science, interact with contemporary society.

The only thing I am left craving is a more in-depth analysis. In this work, one can easily see the cusp of medical practice as it moves forward. Nonetheless, this view of the cusp is not rooted in a deep historical analysis. As a short introduction to a topic (TED Books market themselves as “Small books, big ideas”), this book works, but as a transformative work that changes the future behavior of the human race, it lacks. Not every book needs to change the world, but part of a book’s mission is to open new lenses through which one can see. Perhaps I am out of step with today’s instantaneous age, but I prefer deep books with big ideas more.

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Law One: A strong intuition is much more powerful than a weak test.
Law Two: "Normals" teach us rules; "outliers" teach us laws.
Law Three: For every perfect medical experiment, there is a perfect human bias.

Well, interesting, sort of. I would have probably really liked this in the early days of medical school. Each 'law' is illustrated with a few examples that give the reader a peek into his medical world. You know, the sort of godly laying-of-the-hands-and-the-noble-art-of-medicine world. Not the mucky real world of indifference, greed,and incompetence all jostling and wrestling hard with the grunting idealists pulling out all the stops and trying their darndest to save this life, because dammit we all deserve that, don't we?
Still, it is a lovely little book, physically. It would be a perfect gift for a new med student or newly minted doctor. ( )