Introduction

There is an inherent bias in medicine whereby doctors tend to overestimate the benefits, and underestimate the harms, of their craft. I do not aim to correct this bias, as attempts to do this in the past have failed. This is because it is human nature to believe in what you do, to the extent that we tend to overestimate our own value.
My aim is to make the readers aware of this bias, so that next time they are sitting in a doctor's office and are asked to decide on whether or not to have surgery or some other procedure, they will think twice, and consider the possibility that the particular intervention on offer might not be as beneficial as advertised, and might have more risks than advertised.
Rather than have a general discussion about the problem, I will put the spotlight on areas where this bias occurs to provide specific examples. This is not because I do not wish to have the discussion, but because the format of blogs is more suited to a collection of examples, rather than a running commentary.