CLEAN SURFACES (REVISITED).

CLEAN SURFACES (REVISITED). I have posted several times, including here, about efforts to reduce hospital infections. This article by Tara Parker-Pope describes how the British National Health Service has imposed a “bare below the elbows” rule against doctors wearing neckties and long sleeves. As reported here, a commentary in a British medical journal has questioned the rule because there is a lack of data. Ironically, a quote from the commentary says that the available evidence is “mostly in obscure medical journals.” I think that questions of hospital cleanliness don’t have a great deal of intellectual interest, so that it is not surprising that only obscure journals consider them. I also think that the controversy is a good example of the gulf between frequentists and Bayesians that I posted on here. There is evidence that germs can live a long time on fabrics. A Bayesian would give that fact, plus the fact that germs cause infections, a great deal of weight. But there is apparently no controlled experiment on the issue. As the Parker-Pope article says, “there’s no evidence that clothing plays a role in the spread of hospital infections.”