We Don’t Need More Blood Tests
It seems like one of the biggest issues here is that a single test for a given thing isn&#x27;t enough data to be able to reliably tell whether or not the results are significant.  So people are arguing that we should collect fewer data points?<p>I totally disagree with this viewpoint.  The medical community&#x27;s current approach to testing (positive result, treat ALL THE THINGS!) is an artifact of the difficulty and cost of performing the tests; the inability of many providers to apply basic concepts of probability to test results should not be used as an argument against advancing the state of the art, particularly as the industry begins baking data-driven clinical decision support into automated health systems.<p>If you have 40 tests spanning 20 years saying that you aren&#x27;t at risk for Total Scrotal Implosion, and then suddenly, without any symptoms, you get a result saying your testicles will fall off tomorrow, you have context with which to interpret this result.  Without the historic data there is much greater risk of you and your healthcare provider agreeing to an unnecessary knee-jerk scrotalectomy.<p>Less data is never the answer.  Just my 2 cents.