Why We Can't Always Find What We're Looking for (and Sometimes Find What Isn't There)

[Dave Farber <dfarber () me com>]

> From: <bobr () bobrosenberg phoenix az us>
> To: "Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>
> Date: January 16, 2010 12:58:38 PM EST
> Subject: Why We Can't Always Find What We're Looking for (and Sometimes  Find What Isn't There)
>
> Dave
>
> Perhaps for I.P.
>
> This item from sciencedaily.com, by way of AAAS, shows a way to help screeners do a
> more effective job -- whether they are screening people at the airport or screening
> people for Cancer.
>
> Cheers,
> Bob
>
>
>
> Why We Can't Always Find What We're Looking for (and Sometimes Find What Isn't There)
> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100114143010.htm
>
> ScienceDaily (Jan. 15, 2010) — When people look for things that are rare, they
> aren't all that good at finding them. And it turns out that the reverse is also
> true: When people look for something common, they will often think they see it even
> when it isn't there. A new report published online on January 14th in Current
> Biology, offers new insight into why this happens and may suggest some simple
> methods to help airport security personnel looking for weapons and radiologists
> looking for tumors get better at their jobs, according to the researchers.
>
> "We know that if you don't find it often, you often don't find it," said Jeremy
> Wolfe of Harvard Medical School. "Rare stuff gets missed." That means that if you
> look for 20 guns in a stack of 40 bags, you'll find more of them than if you look
> for the same 20 guns in a stack of 2,000 bags.
>
> But the lingering question was, why? Do people simply start going too fast, get
> careless, and say "no" too much? If that were true, then people looking for common
> stuff should also start going too fast, get careless, and say "yes" too much. It
> turns out that's not what they do, the new study shows. People do send false alarms
> when looking for common items, but they don't say "yes" faster, they say "no" much
> more slowly.
>
> "When nothing is there, they don't give up on the response," Wolfe explained. "It's
> all terribly adaptive behavior for a beast in the world. If you know berries are
> there, you keep looking until you find them. If they are never there, you don't
> spend your time hunting."
>
> But that adaptive inclination in nature can cause problems when people start looking
> for rare things, like guns in baggage or breast cancer. Airport screeners know there
> probably isn't a gun in your bag, and radiologists know that a tumor probably isn't
> going to be there, but they really want to catch it if there is. "We aren't
> well-built for that and make more errors than we'd like."
>
> Wolfe thinks that there may be ways to solve this problem, or at least to improve
> upon our searching skills. He says that his team suspects error rates may be lowered
> by offering people in jobs like these some simple retraining at the start of every
> shift. If they spend a couple of minutes doing a simulated search for common weapons
> or tumors, they might then do a better job at really finding rare ones for the next
> 30 minutes or so.
>
> The researchers plan to conduct tests at the clinic and the airport, to see whether
> the effects seen in the laboratory will hold true in the real world where the stakes
> are higher. They will also test strategies designed to make people less prone to
> making the wrong call.
>
> The researchers include Jeremy M. Wolfe, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Cambridge,
> MA, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA; and Michael J. Van Wert, Brigham and Women's
> Hospital, Cambridge, MA
>
>
> Story Source:
>
>    Adapted from materials provided by Cell Press, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.


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