What this is
Medical information arrives every day: headlines, advertisements, guidelines, test results, diagnoses. Most of it is harder to read than it looks. This publication exists to help you read it. The goal is not to make you distrust medicine. It is to give you the tools for a better conversation with the people who practice it.
The progress in medicine is real. But the messaging around it has been muddled by incentives that have little to do with your health. Researchers are rewarded for publishing early and often. Drug companies are rewarded for the framing that makes a benefit sound largest. Neither requires anyone to lie. A relative risk reported without its baseline is perfectly true and still misleading.
What you will get
One claim or recommendation per post: what it says, what the evidence says, the fault at work, and what to ask. Every source is named so you can check it.
Who writes it
Murray Cantor is a PhD mathematician and a retired IBM Distinguished Engineer whose career has consisted of applying mathematical thinking across a wide range of fields. He writes as a patient, not a physician. The material grew out of the Healthy Skepticism course, developed with Joel Keenan MD.
Educational, not medical advice. The six fault papers, the decision kits, and the course are at healthy-skepticism.com
