Noise, Signal, and Confirmation Bias in Dermatological Diagnosis

Dermatology is heavily dependent on visual pattern recognition for making a clinical diagnosis. While intuition-based judgment works well for dermatologists for common, straightforward cases, the same may not hold true for difficult-to-diagnose cases, or in conditions which are not common. Such cases need slow thinking. As described by Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman in his celebrated book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, human thinking can be divided into two broad categories: fast thinking is based on intuitive immediate judgment, and slow thinking is based on contemplating in the higher centers of the brain, cerebral cortex, and which is more likely to be based on sound logic [1].