Living with uncertainty: lessons learnt from covid – GWC Mag

As someone who spent his career teaching medical students about uncertainty, I appreciated Launer’s reflection.1Richard Smith, a former editor of The BMJ, gave similar advice 20 years ago.2 He quotes the famous aphorism of Dave Sackett: “Half of what you’ll learn in medical school will be shown to be either dead wrong or out of date within five years of your graduation; the trouble is that nobody can tell you which half.”For many years, I used this quote in the first lecture that students at Sheffield received on medical statistics. The lessons learnt from the covid pandemic would make good teaching examples. In particular, the recent Royal Society report showed the poor evidence for cleaning surfaces as a means of prevention3 after we were told by experts that it was essential (I wasted much time cleaning surfaces for this reason).