A hospital mandate requiring pneumonia patients to get antibiotics within four hours leads to over-testing—every patient who might have pneumonia, including those with mere colds, gets an expensive chest x-ray—illustrating that data-derived rules can have hidden costs even when the underlying finding is sound.

causalpending

Speaker

Russ Roberts

Evidence Quote

people come in with colds get a chest x-ray and as a results very very expensive so that's one of the pitfalls of this kind of rules versus data

Source

Ian Ayres on Super Crunchers and the Power of Data 10/22/2007EconTalk
Created: 6/17/2026, 10:31:42 AM

My Notes

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