Statistical Literacy A Prerequisite for Evidence-Based Medicine

Currently in the United States a prostate cancer drug is being touted in a novel way: The primary benefit of the drug is claimed to be not that it reduces the risk of the disease, but rather that it reduces the risk of being treated for the disease. “Men are getting screened, discovering that they have cancers that may or may not be dangerous, and opting for treatments that can leave them impotent or incontinent … Preventing the cancer can prevent treatments that can be debilitating, even if the cancers were never lethal to start with ” (Kolata, 2008, p. A1). Such is the state of doctor–patient communication: Most doctors and virtually all patients are unschooled in how meaningfully to compare the risks of foregoing versus undergoing treatment, and the patient’s frantic desire to “do something, now ” often trumps the doctor’s ancient commitment to “first, do no harm.” The problem that Gigerenzer, Gaissmaier, Kurz-Milcke, Schwartz, and Woloshin address in this exemplar of interdisciplinary and international collaboration could hardly be more pressing. Marshalling one study after another, they demonstrate that, across widely varying samples of health professionals, patients, and policymakers, in al