51. The Expert vs. the Algorithm: Gary Klein on Decision-Making in Healthcare

Doctors are increasingly asked to follow decision rules, guidelines, and “evidence-based” algorithms. Is that the right approach to take care of patients? Are cognitive errors over-emphasized in healthcare?

Our guest on this episode is Gary Klein, one of the most important figures in cognitive psychology in the world. His pioneering work in the field of naturalistic decision-making has become a major challenge to the established schools of thought on how experts make good decisions.

He is a leader of a growing research community focused on understanding how human beings acquire and apply knowledge to complex situations under uncertainty. He has developed novel explanatory models and training methods for decision-making that are widely recognized as ground-breaking. He is the author of numerous books, including the best-sellers Streetlights and Shadows: Searching for the Keys in Adaptive Decision-Making and Seeing What Others Don’t: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insight. He is notorious for having gained the respect and admiration of his intellectual opponent, Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, with whom he co-authored a widely read paper contrasting their somewhat divergent views.