" to not be aware of (or not want to care about) any other machinations that happen peripherally to what they're focused on."
I don't disagree and it sounds like the proverbial urban legend about the kid who said "just let the air out of the tires" when the truck was stuck under the bridge.
I guess the question really is then how do you make an atmosphere where you can make people with blinders aware of other possible solutions in other disciplines or entertain wild thoughts from normals. (Not normals but I believe the success of Bell Labs stemmed from having all sorts of disciplines in close proxmity to each other to solve problems. But of course the "respect" factor was very important in that working.)
That's the billion dollar question...as hackers, we've take a spirit of openness and free exchange for granted. I don't think that exists as much in many areas of medical research...even research done in academia is mostly sponsored by industry. The fact of it is, the overhead/investment needed to introduce a new innovation in medicine is extremely high, in terms of time and in millions of dollars. So sharing is not going to be actively encouraged.
In terms of how to reduce the blinders in the practice of medicine in general...also, a tough question. Practitioners are resistant to change not only (or even perhaps mostly) because of intellectual elitism, but out of disincentives in the system. A formal implementation of a checklist that is as simple as "wash your hands" and "mark the limb to be operated upon with an 'X'" can be seen as a liability. Every ER surgeon has had some kind of experience when procedure is broken because of the pandaemonium involved in any given operation...it's not that they are too dumb to wash their hands, it's just an easy step to overlook when chaos breaks out. If a surgeon does forget to wash her hands and a patient suffers (either because of it or from an unrelated thing), that checklist is going to be seized on by the malpractice lawyer.
Malpractice is a very real, common thing in the medical industry...and so even common sense innovations with be held back out of well-intentioned concerns. This goes for electronic medical keeping and many other kinds of improvements that are still in limbo.
Another woman (that I dated for many years not my wife) was a radiologist. She wouldn't even go on the record in reviewing another docs interpretation of a study. Didn't want to get on the chart lest get sued.
Otoh others in her group took malpractice as a necessary cost of doing business to churning out a top number of studies per day. It was expected that you would get sued and almost was a marker that you produced a lot of work.
The other thing that happened quite frequently that I personally experienced was the signing of study reports. If she didn't get her studies signed (electronically she did this from home so much for hipaa) someone else would sign them for her. They would just do "y" "y" "y" never reading and never catching errors in her dictation. Just approving so it could move to a final state. (You know the same way customer service people want to "close out" a support ticket).
".as hackers, we've take a spirit of openness and free exchange for granted. "
I think that stems from being a member of the "non it" group originally and finding acceptance among a group of people that appreciate and reinforce someone's willingness to share with others.
"that checklist is going to be seized on by the malpractice lawyer."
It's worse than that. My wife is a Physician. Not a week goes by when she tells me a hospital story where I think up something that a lawyer could use against them for something they don't do correctly or could have prevented.
An example, from just this morning:
The hospital that she works at has physicians that are on call to cover if there is an overload of patients. But they also have Physicians that will ask another to cover them if they can't make it in or have some other obligation. But there is no system in place to prevent the person who is "on call" from agreeing to help someone even though they are backup for the other situation. It's entirely up to the Physician to not do the wrong thing. And it happens since that is why I am telling this story and how the discussion came up.
I don't disagree and it sounds like the proverbial urban legend about the kid who said "just let the air out of the tires" when the truck was stuck under the bridge.
I guess the question really is then how do you make an atmosphere where you can make people with blinders aware of other possible solutions in other disciplines or entertain wild thoughts from normals. (Not normals but I believe the success of Bell Labs stemmed from having all sorts of disciplines in close proxmity to each other to solve problems. But of course the "respect" factor was very important in that working.)