Snowball in a blizzard: a physician's notes on uncertainty in medicine

Introduction

Primum non nocere : the motivations and hazards of overdiagnosis

Vignette : the perils of predictive value

Snowball in a blizzard

The pressures of managing pressure

Lyme's false prophets : chronic fatigue, tick-borne illness, and the overselling of certainty

The origins of knowledge and the seeds of uncertainty

The correlation/causation problem, or why dark chocolate may not lower your risk of heart failure

"Health watch" : hype, hysteria, and the media's overconfident march of progress

Conclusion : the conversation

Appendix. A very nonmathematical description of statistical significance.