A few weeks ago there was a Less Wrong thread about truly brilliant people, especially mathematicians, who often got good but not perfect SAT scores. The consensus was that the SATs were a better test of how long you can go without making a mistake than of genius. At the time I read this I (who got good but not perfect SAT scores) was all “yeah, the SATs are bad at measuring brilliance. And I did better in more advanced classes than I did in the intro ones, because the intro ones were about how close you came to matching their expectations, and the advanced ones were about original thought. In fact the smartest people will do worse, because this is so trivial to them it is boring. I sure hope the SATs feel bad for failing to recognize my their brilliance.”
I was about 10% of the way through Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals when I realized that if I am recovering from dangerous surgery and need a central line*, it is more important that my doctor can follow the safety checklist without getting bored than that he be capable of original thought. Like, way, way more important. We need doctors capable of original thought somewhere, so they can invent new procedures and drugs and things, but outside of their magesteria they do more harm than good.
So maybe the SATs are doing a valuable service by injecting a little bit of what it takes to succeed in the real world into their otherwise-pretty-much-an-IQ-test. And maybe we should start selecting doctors for what they actually do most of the time. Alternately, maybe we should move central-line-type work to techs and computer algorithms and use doctors for research and cases weird enough to be on TV. But what we should definitely not do is select people for brilliance and make lives depend on their ability to work methodically.
*Central lines deliver fluids better than IVs but are more vulnerable to infections, which can be fatal, especially in people recently weakened by trauma or illness, which is everyone who is getting a central line. You can greatly reduce the chance of an infection by following a fairly simple list of steps like “use gloves” and “sterilize skin”, but these are often skipped.
Aceso Under Glass 