The Laws of Medicine: Field Notes from an Uncertain Science

By Siddhartha Mukherjee

Categories: Medical Books, Science & Math

Siddhartha Mukherjee, the cancer researcher and author of The Emperor of All Maladies, proposes three laws that govern medicine. They are that a strong intuition is much more powerful than a weak test, that normals teach us rules while outliers teach us laws, and that every perfect medical experiment is perfectly biased. Mukherjee illustrates each with stories and argues that medicine is a science of uncertainty.

Recommended by 1 person

• Shane Parrish: “Siddhartha Mukherjee is an amazing writer (he’s also written The Gene, and The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize). In this short book, he explores whether medicine is a Science, and if so, what are its laws?”