“Are you sure it’s going to work?”
That’s the wrong question to consider when proposing a study.
It’s also not helpful to say, “It’s unlikely to solve the problem.”
All the likely approaches have already been tried.
The useful steps are:
Is there a problem worth solving?
Is the expense of this test reasonable?
Will the study cause significant damage?
Of all the things we can test, is this a sensible one to try next?
Our fear of failure is real. It’s often so significant that we’d rather live with a problem than face the possibility that our new approach might be wrong.
If the problem is worth solving, it’s probably worth the effort and risk that the next unproven test will require.
[In this podcast, Dr. Jonathan Sackner-Bernstein talks with some patients and a doctor about his novel approach to Parkinson’s disease. Participants in the conversation bring up the conventional wisdom he’s challenging and share reasons why his theory probably won’t work. But none of the critics has a better alternative. The cost of the test is relatively low, and the stakes of the problem are quite high. There’s no clear answer. This is precisely what a study is for.]
What will it cost to test your solution to our problem? Okay, begin.
