Clinical Research Directory

Post-Hoc Enthusiasm and Wariness

Sponsor: Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre

Summary

The post-hoc fallacy (also termed the post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc fallacy) has been recognized for centuries with endless relevance. The general concept in medical care is that patients who improve after a treatment are not necessary patients who improve because of a treatment. Modern medicine provides multiple opportunities to examine such pitfalls of judgment due to the prevailing uncertainty, incompleteness of our understanding pathogenic mechanisms, and natural tendency to connect treatments to outcomes. In this study, we will investigate whether judgments about vitamin supplementation might demonstrate the post-hoc fallacy.

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