Molecularism Misleads: Data and Theory Blindness

“If one wishes to understand the behavior of animals, one must take account of their individuality, annoying as this may be to those who prefer the tidiness of physics, chemistry, and mathematical formulations.”

– Donald Griffin via Jennifer Ackerman in The Bird Way

In Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman dissects the psychology of academics who are unable to grasp—indeed, to tolerate—new ideas. I was reminded of what he calls “theory blindness” when my new doctor told me that proton pump-inhibiting drugs (PPIs) given for years for indigestion are now thought to cause dementia. The fact that some unspecified set of problems led to prescription of PPIs, and that PPIs did nothing to threat that problem, is forgotten, but the data regarding treatment remain to be used and to become a nidus for molecular story-telling.

I have reason to believe that PPIs are “innocent”—or rather, guilty—bystanders when it comes to nervous system sequella to PPI treatment. Once PPIs suppress symptoms, those symptoms remain mysterious because they are not taken as warning signs of deeper—and more dangerous—problems. Those problems are never solved. Instead, illness becomes chronic and codependent with what emerging biotech researchers are now viewing as the era of the modern blockbuster drug—the kind that had to be taken indefinitely, and that may have given false reassurance instead of solving the problem.

Here’s why I don’t accept that PPIs cause dementia: when I began to have gastrointestinal problems, and my consultant put me on PPIs, I remained concerned about why I was having problems. With great difficulty, I weaned myself from PPIs and began to search for the underlying cause, which turned out to be poisons in food that damaged the whole of my gastrointestinal and nervous systems.

Now, years on, users of “big data” correlate PPIs and dementia, and the data—like the managers and researchers who use it—seem blithely unaware of the distinction between “care” that makes illnesses chronic, and cure that does not. This foolish fixation on routinely-collected data—which are mainly managerial in any case, and are mistaken for medical reality—is a classic example of what goes wrong when you let big data do your thinking. When you do, chances are good that you lack the data—and the wisdom—to grasp what may be going on.

Put differently, experience has taught me that while PPIs are unlikely to cause dementia, modern medical systems are. By valuing uniformity, efficiency, and dogma over discovery, these systems bar problem-solving, substitute old data for new wisdom, stifle warning signs, and turn acute diseases into chronic ones. They impose a model of codependence that prevents cure, as do ‘alternatives’ that emulate them. And so they ensure that standards of treatment—however faulty—are applied without thought, turning a human miracle into an assembly line that endangers each and every life.

Will doctors see this? How could they? They’re paid to manage modern technology and given no freedom to think about it. Even if they had time, they would have to overcome theory blindness enforced for a lifetime by legions of screen believers. They would have to do the impossible. It wouldn’t be the first time—but there may be no next time.