This is the natural contradiction in stock buying advice.

If the guy making the recommendation doesn't hold the stock, that makes his advice suspect as why isn't he following his own advice?

But if the guy making the recommendation does hold the stock, that makes his advice suspect as he'd profit just as much from promoting bad stocks as good ones. Isn't he just recruiting greater fools?

That reminds me of a question I was once asked: You're in the hospital and are about to have surgery. You see the surgeon, just before the surgery is about to start, reading up on the operation he's about to perform in a textbook. Do you trust that surgeon more, or less now?

Interesting question. Slightly related, the book The Checklist Manifesto argues for checklists in operation rooms, to prevent rare but disastrous cases like "scalpel left inside patient", or "wrong blood type administered".

So maybe a different version of the question could be: "Do you have more or less confidence in the operating team (surgeon, nurses) using a checklist?" After reading the book I would have more confidence.

> industry-standard automated tracking technology with (for example) bar codes and radio frequency tags, than a checklist

The book referenced, The Checklist Manifesto, is worth a read. Checklists outperform automated tracking technologies because checklists don't silently fail.

Is there an independent reference for this?

In my experience, checklists almost always silently fail.

[Edited to add: 2015 column in Nature suggests studies giving positive results to checklists don't replicate: https://www.nature.com/news/hospital-checklists-are-meant-to... ]

> column in Nature suggests studies giving positive results to checklists don't replicate

"In a review of nearly 7,000 surgical procedures performed at 5 NHS hospitals, they found that the checklist was used in 97% of cases, but was completed only 62% of the time8. When the researchers watched a smaller number of procedures in person, they found that practitioners often failed to give the checks their full attention, and read only two-thirds of the items out loud9. In slightly more than 40% of cases, at least one team member was absent during the checks; 10% of the time, the lead surgeon was missing."

Yes, exactly... 64% of the time, in well-sampled professional surgical settings, the checklist was not even completed?

Try saying/doing that in the airplane industry. Pilots are trained to use the checklist in all operations.

I would like both please. Tracking technology helps with the specific example of tools left inside patients, but does nothing for things like accidentally amputating the wrong leg.

Both is fine, but given the choice I'd prefer to watch a member of the surgical team write with a sharpie on my legs.

Sure, but until then, a checklist could be a $100 dollar solution for a hospital in Zambia until there is more money for a more advanced system.

I remember chatting with some of the top US specialists in a specific field and they all freely admitted that after seeing a patient with a less common condition that they need to go back a give themselves a refresher. Unless it's something you see every day, it's almost impossible to keep all that information in your head.

Less. I want a surgeon to have done my procedure a good number of times already recently (if I get to choose.)

I disagree. Pre-X checklists exist because the reliability gained by going through step-by-step isn't easily replicated by other means. And, even if the surgeon has done your procedure every day this week, what are the odds they did it for someone with exactly your 'specs'? Surely there are considerations to be made based on age, gender, allergies, fitness level, and much more that it would be worthwhile to address prior to cutting into the patient.

Checklist, sure.

Textbook, no.

And yet pilots often read checklists, even after thousands of flight hours. In fact, they are often required to. It is a way to make sure they don't skip steps that are important in case of emergency. Emergencies don't happen often, and it is easy to forget them when things become routine.

So it is understandable you want an experienced surgeon to do your procedure, but if a surgeon is reading a textbook, it doesn't mean he is less experienced than one who doesn't. He may be less confident, but if you consider the Dunning–Kruger effect, it is not necessarily a bad thing.

A checklist is quite a bit different from a textbook

That level of specialization doesn’t really exist in the US outside of the Oklahoma Surgery Center. Surgeons do a kind of surgery, not a particular surgery. That’s part of why some Indian surgical places are so good; much, much more specialization than is the norm in North America or Europe.

Huh? This is completely wrong.

For instance, I have Thoracic Outlet Syndrome. It's something really fucking shitty that overhead sports players and computer nerds are prone to (along with those with connective tissue disorders)

It's surprisingly super fucking hard to get right and general surgeons have fucked a lot of people up attempting to do it. Most famously, a Houston Astros pitcher was left paralyzed by the surgery, and his surgeon later ran into him homeless under a bridge. I think I have that linked in my more recent of comments.

Anyways, there are about 5 major hospitals in the U.S. with completely specialized Thoracic Outlet Surgery divisions within their vascular surgery wing of the hospital. These surgeons only do this one specific surgery - removing first/cervical ribs, sometimes along with two other involved muscles. My surgeon is Dr. Dean Donahue of Boston Mass General's Thoracic Outlet Surgery Program - arguably the most famous and successful practicioner of said surgery in the U.S./world.

Now, obviously, my condition isn't some special case. There's quite a few 'rarer' super specific medical conditions requiring a single specific surgery that larger U.S. hospitals (think Mayo Clinic, Cedars Sinai, Mass General, Cleveland Clinic, etc) do have devoted wings for with surgeons that only do that singular procedure in their otherwise generalized division. Not just the "Oklahoma Surgery Center"

Sorry if I misinterpreted what you were saying or if this otherwise seems like I'm ranting and rambling haha. Not trying to rant - just wanted to inform/give some insight.

In the US, it really depends on the surgery and the center. I know from chatting to some doctors that eye surgery for example, isn't exclusively cataract surgery, but it's like 60% of their surgeries and typically done by a handful of doctors. Back of the eye surgery is done at the same center, but by another set of doctors.

So while it's true it's not common to find the type of single surgery centers like they have in India, there are lots of surgeons who do the same surgery weekly or several times per week.

But yeah, if you're seeing an ENT at a smaller center, they might be doing 100 procedures a year and no more than 10 of any given type.

This is not a prototype, this is a surgeon performing production-level work. It's the same as if you had to whip out a basic service (as trivial as it core domain logic could be) but with all the details it need: deployment pipeline, monitoring, logging, a future-proof architecture (or do you want to be living with subpar heart surgery because the prototype was faster to deliver?).

The analogy breaks down very quickly, I just wanted to demonstrate how absurd your statement is.

It is entirely possible that looking at how to perform the procedure prevents fringe failures of surgery. Imagine your surgeon does his job extremely well but it turns out he performed the wrong surgery on the wrong patient because he trusted his memory too much.

That makes perfect sense if the person hyping the stock is relatively unknown and has minimal reach. Things get murky if an individual has enough of a following to move markets. If someone with enough clout, say Ackman or Dalio start pitching a particular stock, it's difficult to know whether they actually believe it will rise or if they hope to profit off others listening to them.

> Why would you trust someone hyping a stock if they don't stand to benefit from any price rise?

Because they wouldn't be _hyping_ a stock?

If someone owns stock, they benefit from a price rise, so any evaluation is a reflection of that.

If someone doesn't own stock, they don't benefit from a price rise, but from rendering a correct evaluation.

Someone who doesn't own a stock benefits from the publicity. Peter Schiff has made a lot more money from books and his gold brokerage than investing in gold.

Advice from vested interests might not be always beneficial to the investor or the market e.g. From some one trying to short the stock.