SCREENING CERVICAL SMEARS

A plausible explanation is offered why an experienced pathologist enga ged in the screening of cervical smears should have issued a large num ber of false-negative diagnoses. The explanation centres on the intera ctions which occur between successive judgements when a sequence of si milar stimuli are inspected. Briefly, those interactions have the char acter of an assimilation of each judgement to its predecessor, and the resultant process is capable of 'running away'. A procedure is sugges ted, involving the provision of immediate knowledge of results for a s mall proportion of the smears inspected, which would prevent such syst ematic misdiagnoses from recurring in the future.