Source: Astral Codex Ten
by Scott Alexander
“Robin Hanson of Overcoming Bias more or less believes medicine doesn’t work. This is a strong claim. It would be easy to round Hanson’s position off to something weaker, like ‘extra health care isn’t valuable on the margin.’ This is how most people interpret the studies he cites. Still, I think his current, actual position is that medicine doesn’t work …. His argument: there have been three big experimental studies of what happens when people get free (or cut-price) health care: RAND, Oregon, and Karnataka. All three (according to him) find that people use more medicine, but don’t get any healthier. Therefore, medicine doesn’t work. If it looks like medicine works, it’s a combination of anecdotal reasoning, biased studies, and giving medicine credit for the positive effects of other good things (better nutrition, sanitation, etc).” (04/24/24)
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/contra-hanson-on-medical-effectiveness