I too could draw cartoons of the Loch Thames monster, emerging and slurping up lines of baffled tourists, like a drug addict sniffing lines of cocaine.
And intone that whether this will happen is a "fundamental and large hole in scientific knowledge".
The pandemic has made it really clear to me that trend to have patients make their own health care decisions with advice from us, is well intentioned but harmful.
A great many people *don't realise* they have no idea how to decide wisely.
This unfortunate citizen thinks that this graph is what they should use to decide whether to have a vaccine.
the doctor has a choice of explaining about RCTs versus irrelevant 3d colour graphs, telescoping into a few minutes what it took years to grasp, or just sigh and move on.
When I get on a plane, I have paid for a pilot to have spent a very long time studying how best to fly a plane.
Even if I prefer him to fly lower so I "get less x-rays", or over the land "so I don't have a risk of drowning", I don't barge in and tweak the steering wheel myself.