Great article. I'm always fascinated at how statistics and examining the past can effectively predict the future. I remember on my mission listening to some missionaries debate how it was that God "knows" the future to the point that He can reveal it to His prophets and how this essentially robs us of agency since a prophet has already seen our future. I'm not saying statistics is the answer, but if you had an infinite number of previous data points at your disposal you could in theory predict the future of recurring events with essentially 100% accuracy. Its actually kind of depressing to think that a previous person on a previous planet with DNA and circumstances so similar to mine would make decision so similar to mine...and that this may have happened an innumerable amount of times that I am pretty much as predictable as my wife says I am :skeptic:
Now, to the best part of the article....
When he began meeting with NFL coaches a few years ago, Burke realized "that coaches have thought of things that never have dawned on me," he says. "I'm always humbled after talking to them.
"I'll be honest," he says. "I'll be watching a game, and I'll wish that a team won't do what I had recommended because I'm so frightened they won't convert. It scares me to death when I see teams take my advice. I can understand, on the sidelines, with all that pressure, any one of us would like to go into the safe harbor of the tried and true. I understand that.
That statement shows a humble man, who despite his probable brilliance (based on the caliber of people that have hired him) is in check by his acceptance for what he doesn't know. That statement alone makes the rest of the article way more acceptable in my opinion. I'd hire this guy in a heartbeat.
Lastly, I don't know you jvq. But, apparently you are an oncologist. I'm an anesthesiologist practicing interventional pain management, frequently for cancer patients. So in many respects our training and daily tasks are similar which is probably why I find myself defending your positions here on occasion (even before I knew your medical background). In a field where people's lives and/or quality of life is dependent on your decisions you simply HAVE to rely on the published evidence to tip the scale one way or the other. Yes, you have to trust your gut A LOT of the time when evidence falls short but if anyone shows me a doc who finds him/herself frequently "going with his gut" in the face of published data then I'll show you a doc that is a disservice to the community. Whether doctors or patients like to admit it, we (society) simply HAVE to treat populations and not just individuals. If current mortality for a disease is 10%, and a new treatment has a 100% cure rate but side effects will kill 9% then its a NO BRAINER that society must implement the treatment even though it means that we will save the 10 out of 100 who would have died without treatment in exchange for killing 9 others who would have survived the disease but won't survive the treatment. In the end we have 91 survivors instead of 90 and we have "played god" in shifting the deaths from one set of 10 to a probably totally different set of 9. And nobody beforehand knows who will be in the group of 10 or the group of 9. If we knew THAT, then we would orchestrate 100% cure with 0% complications. Unfortunately we aren't that sophisticated yet. Its sad, but those are the decisions we must make. Of course, that's little consolation if its YOUR child that has a severe reaction to a vaccine and has a horrible or lethal side effect -- it doesn't help to think that the vaccine saved millions of other kids when yours is the one that dies from the treatment and probably would have survived the disease. (BTW I fully endorse vaccination, just using it as an example).
In the long run (not necessarily in every circumstance or in the short term) its always better to side with statistics rather than emotions. Hence the standing advice to never be your own doctor and to never treat your family or close friends. I've been there. It's a whole different world. For better or for worse (I think for worse) we are not willing to take risks with people we know personally and love. So doctors will alter tried and true diagnostic and therapeutic procedures for loved ones....and actually lessen the chances of a good outcome. Or docs will go overboard with a family member, ordering so many unnecessary tests that a false positive result comes up and then unnecessary treatments ensue with their attendant side effects and potential adverse events...and in the end the family member has worse care from a loving doctor/dad than they would get from an impartial doctor following the proven data.
I think too often coaches are like doctors treating their family members. They love the kids they coach and hate to see their young men, who have devoted their entire (albeit brief) adult life to a particular sport, fail in front of millions of people. So, the coach makes irrational decisions, hoping that "in this case the outcome will be different than statistics would predict." Sometimes the coach is right. BM was right in the bowl game. But over time statistics win out and individuals lose.
I also think what the guy says in the article about coaches simply playing it safe because they are scared is true too.
Of course, the absolute best coach (and doctor) is one that KNOWS the statistics and follows them with complete understanding and ALSO recognizes when he is in a situation that hasn't been perfectly described by previous data points....and then makes the best educated decision. I think BM did this in the bowl game. Even though there are lots of data to suggest going for it on 4th down is the right decision almost uniformly once you cross the 50 yard line, that data was not collected from a team with the #2 punter in the nation and the #3 defense in the nation and an offense with absolutely no identity. So, I'm gonna give BM the benefit of the doubt and assume he knows the data AND knows its limitations and made the right decision (even though probably what really happened was BM just played it safe and got lucky enough to be dealt a straight flush 8) ).
