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. 2020 Dec;35(12):1115-1121.
doi: 10.1007/s10654-020-00700-w. Epub 2020 Nov 28.

When will individuals meet their personalized probabilities? A philosophical note on risk prediction

Olaf M Dekkers  1 , Jesse M Mulder  2
Affiliations

When will individuals meet their personalized probabilities? A philosophical note on risk prediction

Olaf M Dekkers et al. Eur J Epidemiol. 2020 Dec.

Abstract

Risk prediction is one of the central goals of medicine. However, ultimate prediction-perfectly predicting whether individuals will actually get a disease-is still out of reach for virtually all conditions. One crucial assumption of ultimate personalized prediction is that individual risks in the relevant sense exist. In the present paper we argue that perfect prediction at the individual level will fail-and we will do so by providing pragmatic, epistemic, conceptual, and ontological arguments.

Keywords: Individual risk; Ontology; Philosophy; Prediction; Reference class.

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