In this journal, Cummins et al reported an experiment that examined clinicians' predictions of causes of death from subjects' pre-morbid photographs. They found that clinicians performed at chance. The validity of two of their other conclusions are challenged. First, that clinicians routinely form impressions of how a person will die from their appearance. Second, that certain health professionals use common judgements to form these impressions. These claims are found to be based upon non-falsifiable hypothesis and inappropriate statistics; hence, an experiment employing pictures of feet (or any arbitrary personal detail) would have led the authors to the same conclusions.
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