…That time is now.

As someone deeply concerned with educational issues related to medical misdiagnosis, I always have my eye out for examples of logical thinking gone astray. A couple of weeks ago, one showed up in the New York Times, delivering with it one whopper of a judgment to the arts—and especially to art museums.

In Good Charity, Bad Charity, Peter Singer uses an economically-driven argument to suggest that charity dollars directed to healthcare provide more social benefit than charity dollars given to the arts.

So very logical. So finger-waggingly authoritative. And so riddled with blind spots.

Singer writes as if museums were only about collection display. He overlooks their founding premise of educational benefit to the public at large. He fails to acknowledge the widespread work in improving quality of life in communities (some directly in partnership with healthcare causes), the broad reform afoot to increase audience participation, and the current scholarship indicating deep societal value of public lifelong learning as well as impact on medical learning. He writes as if the fields of healthcare and the arts are sharply disconnected, as if entire fields such as art therapy and healing arts, do not exist. Countless studies have linked art to education, art to wellness, and education to health. Why doesn’t he acknowledge these things?

False certainty such as this is known in medical terms as “premature closure.” It’s a particularly human thought pattern—we all have a tendency to come to conclusions too early—though in a medical context, the outcomes are particularly dangerous, sad, costly, and visible.  One of the factors at play in premature closure is the failure to acknowledge possibilities beyond what you already know—or think you know.

One of the silver linings to this is that Singer may have inadvertently taught the art museum field about premature closure:  not only does it feel disrespectful to receive it, it can be downright dangerous (if patients and families believe it; if arts funders believe it).

I see this as a silver lining because I work to raise awareness about premature closure, and I believe that art has a role to play in solving it. Studies have shown that physicians who combine both rational and intuitive strategies for diagnosis make better clinical decisions. Wouldn’t these healthcare providers—and all people alike—benefit from a thought exercise, before the pressures of real-world performance begin? Art brings us to a place beyond what we know, forcing us to acknowledge our own biases and limits. Sounds like a valuable educational role to me. Medicine is not the only field that would benefit.

I applaud Singer’s goal-oriented spirit and willingness to address this controversial issue of priorities. And I share similar concerns about allocating eggs into the right baskets to make for a better world. I regularly ask myself if saving a great painting would be worth a human life, and acknowledge that one’s answer is deeply intertwined with personal values. In my experience, however, the real work of problem-solving to make a better world is in breaking silos down, not in reinstating them.