So for this week, i read a scholarly article on gut decisions as opposed to normified or go-to actions taken, in this instance by doctors. The situation was like this: a boy came to the hospital and was very ill and the doctors didn’t quite know why but they did know that he wasn’t eating. His doctor, initially, figured out that his home life was no so good and that his mother sometimes forgot to feed him. The father was no where around. So the doctor decided that he would try and get the kid to eat. So he tried to make him feel comfortable and eat and it worked. then a bunch of other doctors lamb basted him for not running a thousand tests on the kid before he did anything, because that was the normal procedure. So they turned around and put the kid through a million blood tests, lumbar punctures, and other medical things and the kid became very uncomfortable and stopped eating and died. The doctors did an autopsy on his body and they still couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him, so they ultimately failed. This is a tragic example of normified decisions made by groups of people who basically always just “follow procedure”. If they would have allowed the first doctor to keep going with his gut feeling of just trying to get the kid to eat, maybe he wouldn’t have died. I.e. It is important to take into account our gut feelings, even, and maybe especially, if it goes against what is “normal” or what is “expected”.
http://www.presenttensejournal.org/vol1/in-defense-of-gut-feelings-rhetorics-of-decision-making/