Sunita Sah

Investigation momentum: The relentless pursuit to resolve uncertainty.

Debate regarding the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening test centers around test reliability and whether screening reduces mortality.1-3 We consider yet another potential downside to the widespread use of unreliable screening tests: the downstream effect of receiving inconclusive or ambiguous results. When receiving information from screening tests, we usually want to know whether the result is

Investigation momentum: The relentless pursuit to resolve uncertainty. Read More »

Confessing One’s Sins but Still Committing Them: Transparency and the Failure of Disclosure.

Authored Chapter 6 for Behavioural Public Policy with Cain, D., & Loewenstein, G. How can individuals best be encouraged to take more responsibility for their well-being and their environment or to behave more ethically in their business transactions? Across the world, governments are showing a growing interest in using behavioural economic research to inform the

Confessing One’s Sins but Still Committing Them: Transparency and the Failure of Disclosure. Read More »

Physicians under the influence: Social psychology and industry marketing strategies.

Abstract Pharmaceutical and medical device companies apply social psychology to influence physicians’ prescribing behavior and decision making. Physicians fail to recognize their vulnerability to commercial influences due to self-serving bias, rationalization, and cognitive dissonance. Professionalism offers little protection; even the most conscious and genuine commitment to ethical behavior cannot eliminate unintentional, subconscious bias. Six principles

Physicians under the influence: Social psychology and industry marketing strategies. Read More »

Disclosing conflicts of interest in patient decision aids.

ABSTRACT Background In 2005, the International Patient Decisions Aid Standards (IPDAS) Collaboration developed quality criteria for patient decisions aids; one of the quality dimensions dealt with disclosure of conflicts of interest (COIs). The purposes of this paper are to review newer evidence on dealing with COI in the development of patient decision aids and to

Disclosing conflicts of interest in patient decision aids. Read More »