Confirmation Bias is a Norm and Most Don’t Even Know It’s a Thing

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According to Oxford Dictionary:

the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories.

Ever had an argument with someone and you try to be as rational as possible when they try to present a conflicting view in relation to your beliefs? There’s a higher chance that you’d Google for the things that will help you show you’re right rather than search for the stuff that would confirm you’re wrong and it’s understandable. We all need to save face so we try to favor data that says yes to our beliefs and no to the conflicting ones.

That’s the gist of the post. Look back on the arguments you had with someone online and recall what was the first thing you search when the other says they are in the right. And even when you grudgingly acknowledge that they have acquired more internet points for rationality, you’d still have that faint hope to bargain with the outcome that somewhere out there those crawlers could find what you’re looking for and to support your claim.

That’s how most really behave on the internet while still having a strong sense of self identity that they are open-minded. The ones that preach that about that themselves often make me raise an eye brow because these are the vocal ones that go reeeee at the slightest conflict disagreement.

The scientific method is one of the best tools the human minds have conceived in the ages passed. The steps are simple to follow, and encourages exercise of logic and reason throughout the process.

I’m not heavily invested on the religious side of things nor do I fancy having conversations where my god is bigger than yours online. But here’s the thing about interpreting history based from sacred scriptures as facts from the past, the ones that wrote them are only writing based on their personal observations and in that sense they are right.

If I said I ate tuna for lunch yesterday, how are you going to prove I actually did when no conflicting proof comes along to support your claim? And what if I thought I ate tuna but it was just mackerel. I can commit to my own observation as believing it to be the truth because that is my observation and you will notice where I will still be wrong about that observation entirely.

Scientific way of thinking includes practicing some room of doubt and exercising ways to validate whatever claim that comes to mind. The ones who wrote the scriptures are historians, not scientists. They can be right about describing what they actually saw because that’s how things looked like in the past. If they described a modern day plane as a large enclosed chariot that were propelled by unseen beasts carrying passengers into the air, I wouldn’t fault them from that description. They are just describing things relative to what they know.

But the scientific way of thinking approaches any observation in the lens of whether what has been observe is a fact, can be replicated, and validated. You know the secret to walking on water? Have some sturdy glass installed just slightly below the water level and stand far away just enough to not let the crowd see the trick. There’s also a chemical trick to to convert water into wine but let’s not dwell into that part.

It's not about proving yourself right. It's about proving what you know can be consistently observed objectively. If you say the ocean is grey, I wouldn't really laugh, I'd ask if you're colorblind if you were male while someone else may find the remark funny. See how perspective changes how you approach claims?

There’s a reason why the null hypothesis is the first thing you usually need to formulate because it’s free from investigator bias.

I’m sure I will trigger some firm believers for even suggesting these. But facts don’t care about your belief system, facts became facts because of their consistency to be true and results can be replicated when tested. If an apple was dropped in the US and accelerated at 9.81 meters per second squared, it’s going to fall at the same rate on some other part of the world where the laws of gravity still applies. It doesn’t need consent if you’re not in the mood to accept that being real.

Modern historians incorporating the scientific method would test whatever data they gathered from the passed and prove it to be so. If the catapult mechanism worked like it was described, shouldn’t the old blue prints available from the old day can enable someone to replicate that? That’s where people start to use their noggin and just not limit themselves on taken their elder’s word for it.

Going back to confirmation bias being thing, we’re all guilty of the habit or at the very least kept the idea to ourselves before we actually make a response on our online arguments or real life. It‘s a psychological discomfort to think of yourself being at the wrong and no one wants to live thinking their waking actions are in the wrong.

The only way I could think of limiting this bias that rules our lives is exercising some degree of doubt especially when things are going well. And this habit saved my ass a couple of times in the lab when I’m about to release some results where I have overlooked some details that matter. When you say the same pattern of problem and find yourself troubleshooting the problem on a regular basis, there’s this psychological tendency to be confident.

It’s a dragging process even if I already know the explanation for the abnormally high blood sugar the patient has been having is a recent dose of glucocorticoids or an uncontrolled insulin requiring Diabetes. Silly things happen like the blood being extracted while the patient was experiencing hypoglycemia and the blood works indicate the levels were too high? Probably a blood mix up or machine error so it’s another set of work to investigate to but the motivation you have working is when you sign those papers releasing those results, it’s you head and license that’s on the line if you F up.

And I find these little serendipity happen when I’m not even actively looking for it on routine. A lot of human errors stem from people being overly reliant once a habitual result is formed and they become dependent about the consistent results. Machines need to be calibrated, people need to be reoriented and policies need to be changed to suit the need of the department.

You can even think confirmation bias goes together with human stupidity as the former is a prerequisite to the latter.

If you made it this far reading, thank you for your time.

Posted with STEMGeeks



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And this habit saved my ass a couple of times in the lab when I’m about to release some results where I have overlooked some details that matter.

Malpractice in our field happens mostly when people are overconfident and decided that they don't need to double check some details or consult your colleagues. It kinda boils down to being complacent.

I recall one time that a transfusion reaction came in and one of the techs proceeded to process it. Then, we noticed midway that the sample wasn't even blood product at all. The floor somehow screwed up majorly.

But hey, some folks there maintained they weren't wrong until our medical director and the physician on the floor were notified...in the middle of the night.

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I recall one time that a transfusion reaction came in and one of the techs proceeded to process it. Then, we noticed midway that the sample wasn't even blood product at all. The floor somehow screwed up majorly.

How exactly does one mistake the sample as not a blood product? That's got to be several levels of how?

until our medical director and the physician on the floor were notified...in the middle of the night.

Most of the legal stuff get's controlled timely at the physician level so having the problem reach the medical director means several levels of Fucked.

It kinda boils down to being complacent.

This. One of the stupidest referrals is being phoned 2am in the morning for a platelet count of 200+ when the patient was having it around 80+ 2 days ago. They said they ran it twice and was consistently at 200+. Then I asked whether they manually read the slide before they made the referral. The patient had Dengue Fever so they expected it to be lower and not at the recovery period where platelet count shoots up.

After an entire day of being phoned back and forth with other tasks on the office, I was just happy I mustered the strength to tell them to try and count it to see if it coincided with the machine count (Other residents would have blasted them for a stupid referral) but this lady was new and nice to me so I just chalked it off on her karma balance then went back to sleep.

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Medical director for my department is the presiding physician. It’s different from the lab director.

As for the blood product, I have no clue. It was an odd mistake. Fortunately, no erroneous results were reported, just delay of results because of muck up. No harm to the patient other than delays.

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Hi, @adamada.stem interesting your writing, which on the one hand stirs up internal issues of many, as you rightly point out. And, on the other, it is opening the windows a bit more. When I was starting the path of research, quite some time ago, I heard a consolidated researcher say "if at first, the results are as expected, take pause and take care to formulate the experiences, because you can crash when you start". Thank you

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There's also that. Replicate bias, as I understood anyway, happens when researchers try to force results that conform with the established literature especially for studies that have a lot of other studies backing up the established results.

It's a downward spiral an established idea of an apple being red when new studies says they can be in different shades of red. But succeeding researches would try to frame the results to classic red as much as possible to avoid ridicule or skepticism.

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