What's The Trouble, By Jerome Groopman

In Jerome Groopman’s fascinating New York Times article “What’s the Trouble,” we learn of three specific cases in which skilled physicians, “rely[ing] on shortcuts and rules of thumb...known...as ‘heuristics’” (Groopman 4), fail to make accurate diagnoses concerning the unknown maladies of their subjects. However, since the article is written from the limited perspective of a medical professional, it lacks insight into the heuristic techniques of the patient, the cursory and sometimes imprecise trial-and-error processes which he or she must run through to deduce whether or not their clinician is trustworthy. I would like to discuss the heuristic method which I believe to be the most frequently utilized by patients: unverified trust in the doctor’s good morale simply because he or she
If we seem doubtful of the assumption that one is morally upright simply because he or she has a career in medicine, we are struck with a seemingly viable counterargument: all doctors must take the Hippocratic Oath in which they “solemnly” swear to “uphold a number of professional ethical standards” (www.nlm.nih.gov). If we still remain unconvinced as to the universal rectitude of all clinicians, we are belittled and then told that doctors do have our best intentions in mind, as they spent years and countless amounts of money thoroughly studying every aspect of the human body. For why would anyone spend 12 years and half a million dollars for any other reason than to carefully heal and nurture the body of his fellow man? Most of the time, our reliance on “authority heuristics” is rewarded as it is noted that the “majority of physicians” take the words of Hippocrates to heart and refrain from “abus[ing] their patients” (Pesta 4). However, as we have seen the high-profile case of the numerous sexual misdeeds of U.S.A. Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, this type of generalizing can have destructive