How should we label these “cognitive errors” that are particularly common among MDs?

Behavioral economists are really into giving the cognitive errors they study, and the corrective policy interventions they favor, labels. “Status quo bias,” “availability bias,” “recall bias,” etc., can all be fixed through “nudges” that involve “asymmetric paternalism” and the like.

Here’s an interesting “cognitive error” that I’m trying to crowd-source a label for: When America’s joint surgeons were challenged to come up with a list of unnecessary procedures in their field, their selections shared one thing: none significantly impacted their incomes.

And here’s another odd cognitive anomaly that seems to be especially limited to ophthalmologists: forgetting there’s a $50 dollar alternative that works just as well as the $2,000 injection they get 6% commission on. 

I’ve thought of my own labels (or rather, euphemisms) for the policy interventions I would suggest in response: “continuing medical education”  for the first of these neat little errors, and “resocialization” for the second.

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