Honestly I don't disagree with him, it looked far better in 'TeX. But that's probably a learnt preference.

In essence, it's culture.

Replication and meta-analysis are an important part of this.

Most scientists are in fact very conservative with how they claim their results - less so university PR departments and “study shows” clickbaiters.

What makes a file non-static (dynamic?) other than +x?

Both are instructions about how to perform a computation. Both require other software/hardware/microcode to run. In general, the stack is tall!

Even so, I do agree that “a bunch of matrices” feels different to “a bunch of instructions” - although arguably the former may be closer in architecture to the greatest computing machine we know (the brain) than the latter.

They are also written with a particular medicolegal perspective, which the intended audience will appreciate.

I often give my patients copies of their results/reports, which gives me an opportunity to explain them.

If we are going to send reports to patients directly, maybe they need to be written differently? Who should pay for that different report to be written/checked?

We already have AI tools for prioritising the order some tests are processed in (e.g. which X-Rays the radiologist looks at first). But once the report is written the author has a responsibility to ensure any urgent result is escalated. As a requester (I order tests), if I result needs urgent action within days or less, I expect a phone call to myself or another doctor in the practice.

Sometimes what’s “normal” is highly dependant on other factors. In that case you might get a table or other comparative information provided.

That said, some results are still concerning if they’re “high-normal” or “low-normal”, and some results are not that worrying even if they’re slightly abnormal.

> When blood works or whatever exam results are available they should go through some kind of automated system that can flag critical situations like this, without waiting for a doctor.

We already have this. Based on either individual results or how results relate to each other.

Labs will detect critical results and then a range of things happen:

- a scientist may repeat or check the result if the value is extreme, to ensure it isn’t an error

- a scientist may alert a pathologist to the result immediately

- a scientist or pathologist may contact the referring doctor/hospital by phone to provide the result immediately

- in some cases, the lab will contact the patient directly (if they need to go directly to hospital for example)

This also gets done with radiology.

This then gets followed by the official report in hours to days depending on how much confirmation is required.