INFERENCE PATH

Dr. Jerome Groopman, chief of experimental medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, describes many of the possible cognitive errors that can occur in clinical practice in his excellent recent book, How Doctors Think. These cognitive errors can be depicted as supporting assumptions (i.e., answers to “critical questions”).

The ADEPT™ argument map illustrates that a very slender reed can support the premises that lead to a diagnosis. The removal of any one of the supporting assumptions would cause the inference path to collapse removing any chance of any level of certainty or acceptability reaching the conclusion along this particular inference path. Of course, there could be other inference paths that lead to this conclusion which have sufficient probative strength.

Perhaps cognitive errors should be added to the list of the six standard critical questions for Argument from Expert Opinion created by Dr. Douglas Walton.