An important aspect of diagnostic reasoning is the ability to recognise when there is
sufficient evidence to enable a working diagnosis to be made and thus avoid the
unnecessary risks and costs of further testing. On the other hand, the reasoner must be
careful to avoid the error, known as premature closure, of accepting a diagnosis before it is
fully verified. In the absence of a more rigorous approach to verification, a pragmatic
approach adopted in many programs for sequential diagnosis is to discontinue testing when�…