“So many physicians acknowledged that they ordered tests for no medical reason, which makes it clear that physicians feel enormous pressure to behave in a way they may not want to,” says Dr. Hemal Kanzaria, an emergency room physician at University of California Los Angeles and lead author of the study.

Such unnecessary testing is contributing to an estimated $210 billion in additional health care costs; ideally, appropriately used testing should reduce costs by detecting and diagnosing problems early, so patients can get the right treatments and avoid more expensive care.

The top two reasons the doctors ordered these tests were fear of missing something that would help them diagnose their patients, and protection against malpractice. “The over-testing is not due to lack of knowledge on the physicians’ part or poor medical judgment. It more likely reflects the fact that as a society, we don’t like uncertainty, and that has led to an oversimplification of medical care,” says Kanzaria. “There is the thought that if there is any possibility of disease, then we should do something about it, and if there is any doubt, we should test. If the test helps one patient, then everyone should get the test.” So even when doctors know that a test won’t add much information to their treatment decision, they’re more concerned that the patient will want to know why the test wasn’t performed.

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