I agree that one should be concerned about bad incentives in the cosmetic surgery outcomes research. Most of the “researchers” are surgeons. Outcomes research in medicine in general suffers from this problem. I am still comfortable with saying that cosmetic surgery outcomes research does provide net evidence for surgery results being good, even after correcting for conflict of interest concerns.
I’ll write a follow-up post focusing on this question (on my blog, not LW).
I agree that one should be concerned about bad incentives in the cosmetic surgery outcomes research. Most of the “researchers” are surgeons. Outcomes research in medicine in general suffers from this problem. I am still comfortable with saying that cosmetic surgery outcomes research does provide net evidence for surgery results being good, even after correcting for conflict of interest concerns.
I’ll write a follow-up post focusing on this question (on my blog, not LW).