I won't add my own anecdotes cause I think by now we've proven it's a shared experience.
Health professionals have the same gaussian distribution as the rest of humanity. It's a little biased to the right because there's a selection process, but by all means geniuses are few and far between, people who merely made it exist, and on average people are average. But since there's a selection process, and they made it through, they will at the very least feel like they are abnormally qualified to do the job. This gives them overconfidence in their skills.
Now look the dentistry field, composed of sadists who felt since a young age a calling to drill holes in other people's teeth, and who get compensated linearly with how many holes they drill. Will that's incentivize them to drill more than necessary? Will their ego get in the way to overjustify any small operation they can get through?
I won't add my own anecdotes cause I think by now we've proven it's a shared experience.
Health professionals have the same gaussian distribution as the rest of humanity. It's a little biased to the right because there's a selection process, but by all means geniuses are few and far between, people who merely made it exist, and on average people are average. But since there's a selection process, and they made it through, they will at the very least feel like they are abnormally qualified to do the job. This gives them overconfidence in their skills.
Now look the dentistry field, composed of sadists who felt since a young age a calling to drill holes in other people's teeth, and who get compensated linearly with how many holes they drill. Will that's incentivize them to drill more than necessary? Will their ego get in the way to overjustify any small operation they can get through?
Conflicting incentives x overconfidence = screwed up practice. This dude did a study 20y ago across 50 dentists, not a single one gave the same diagnostic. https://web.archive.org/web/20250216213753/https://www.rd.co...