Occam’s Razor is the law of parsimony or, in Latin, Lex Parsimoniae, which dictates that when faced with competing hypotheses, that are equal in all other respects, the better bet is to go with the one that makes the fewest new assumptions. In simple words, the simple hypothesis is the one to go with. In Medicine, we apply this theory to often diagnose patients with multi-systemic presentations, in that, the single diagnosis which describes ALL the symptoms is a better fit than multiple different diagnoses that may better describe the symptomatology. While this may seem contrary to the art of building up a differential diagnosis, with a high probability of putting the patient at risk of a missed diagnosis, that is not the case in that we usually apply this after we have come to a list of differentials that fit the symptomatology.

Now this round that we created for the Researching workshop was initially supposed to be something like the Incentivized PBL rounds that Me and Parijat have championed (hem, hem… modesty five!) but on learning that a majority of the participants would be from the second an third years, we tried to curtail it as much as possible. Needless to say we ended up making it too tough anyways for them! Anyhow, questions time!

None of the participating teams got ALL of the questions right, but in between them and the audience, most of the questions were answered. How many did YOU get?