Atul Gawande Cancer-Cluster Myth

Part A: Background on Gawande and his research In 1999, Atul Gawande published a paper on the “Cancer-Cluster Myth”, which he described at the beginning of the page as, “When a dozen people in a neighborhood develop tumors, it can’t be a coincidence. Or can it?” In other words, Gawande roughly defined the “Cancer-Cluster Myth” as a conglomeration of diseases concentrated in one area of living having to have some sort of connection. Gawande was a surgeon, writer, and public health researcher who practices general and endocrine surgery at Brigham and Women’s hospital (Atul Gawande, “Bio” 2014). His research has generally been focused on the intersection of surgery and public health, which has examined error in surgery, establishing its frequency and seriousness and revealing underlying mechanisms (Atul Gawande, “Bio” 2014). Around the cancer-cluster myth, during the past two decades (keep in mind that the paper was written in 1999), reports of cancer-clusters have soared.

Part B: Definition of representativeness

Representativeness, as defined by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, is when people predict the outcome that appears most representative of the evidence (Kahneman & Tversky 237). Consequently, intuitive predictions are insensitive to the reliability of the evidence or to the prior probability of the outcome, in violation of the logic of statistical prediction (Kahneman & Tversky 237). In regards to the cancer-cluster myth, representativeness could be a reason behind Gawande’s logic of cancer-cluster myths. For example, does Gawande believe in cancer clusters simply because he has known first-hand of a few in his life, or because they are rally