Invincible ignorance

When the boy-child was about 11, he went over the handlebars of his bike, and landed flat on his back. Later in the day, he seemed to make some odd movements while breathing, and said his back hurt some, so we ended up in the emergency room. It was the only truly empty emergency room I have ever seen; staff was standing around, eager to pounce.

Well, he was fine, but the doc -- a very thorough diagnostician who didn't have much else to do -- did a complete workup and interview. Was he under a lot of stress? No, he responded.

As she walked us to the door of the hospital, relieved, I asked her what the stress question was about. She stopped walking, turned bright, bright red, and said: "I can't help it, I just can't help it".

She explained that the site of his back pain could indicate a stomach ulcer. In spite of all her training, family legends of various relatives who had ulcers, and were "Type A" personalities, took precedence; ulcers were caused by stress. Never mind that medical school nonsense. Ulcers are from stress. "They better get your uncle Harry to slow down, or he's gonna get an ulcer".

Well, no. Stomach ulcers had long been considered psychogenic but in the early 1980s, mainly in Australia, there were a series of observations and discoveries which showed conclusively that roughly 90% of ulcers were the result of infection by a certain bacteria. Another 4% were from cancerous growths. The rest, nobody really knows. The 2005 Nobel in Medicine went to the docs who made the connection. Good work all around.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_peptic_ulcer_disease_and_Helicobacter_pylori

So, what is up with the doc in the emergency room? She was young; it wasn't as if she had been practicing for 35 years and seen thousands of ulcer cases. I wondered, on the way to the car, whether the folks who had been practicing for 35 years had an easier time changing their beliefs. When I talk to people now, no matter what age, it is still common to hear the belief that ulcers are emotionally caused. And, there is still a rear-guard action from some docs who spend huge amounts of time and energy trying to show that "stress plays a role in the development of stomach ulcers". By golly, we don't retreat at the first sign of science.

So, a sticky belief, one of the "things we know that we pretend we don't know". A meme. Well, an incorrect meme. Why this one?? For a long time I thought it had to do with the American ambivalence toward achievement -- that if you did well, and worked very hard, you would pay a price somehow. But now, less so; now I think it has more to do with the wish that abusive people will somehow be punished, even if they can emotionally bully us.

So, is that a common factor in all the sticky beliefs? Hard to imagine -- on the face of it, differences in height of populations doesn't have much to do with payback for abuse. But maybe. It may be that they all have to do with differences, and we hold on to the beliefs because, otherwise, they would be us.

Whaddya think????