Dogma

Most shutterbugs had heard, at one time or another, the unmistakable question concerning the number of pixels when people think about the choice of digital cameras. Every so often we consider high-pixel number to be sine qua non of high-quality camera. It isn't.

If you are to go looking for a place where people fall in love with magic figure - which is not magic at all, in fact - the field of medicine is a pretty good candidate. Overwhelmed by the work at hand and with neither the support, know-how, nor the time to step back for detailed history taking, doctors long for a magic figure from laboratory test to make decisions.

I would be remiss not to mention the coagulation test (the prothrombin time and activated partial thromboplastin time, in case you're in favor of big names) as the haemostatic oracle or passport for safe surgery. Not a day passes without some doctors postponing a procedure to wait for that laboratory result of coagulation test. Of course, we don't have a whiff of evidence to support that such battery of coagulation tests offer a good prediction of bleeding risk. Ahem. Perhaps what a normal coagulation test can serve is to make doctors "feel better," and nothing else.