The Philosophy of Evidence-Based Medicine

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) has become a required element of clinical practice, but it is critical for the healthcare community to understand the ongoing controversy surrounding EBM. Seeking to address questions raised by critics, The Philosophy of Evidence-based Medicine challenges the over dependency of EBM on randomized controlled trials. This book also explores EBM methodology and its relationship with other approaches used in medicine. CONTENTS Chapter 1. The Philosophy of Evidence-Based Medicine Chapter 2. What is EBM? Chapter 3. What is good evidence for a clinical decision? Chapter 4. Ruling out plausible rival hypotheses and confounding factors: A method Chapter 5. Resolving the Paradox of Effectiveness: When do Observational Studies offer the Same Degree of Evidential Support as Randomized Trials? Chapter 6. Questioning Double-Blinding as a Universal Methodological Virtue of Clinical Trials: resolving the Philip’s Paradox Chapter 7. Placebo controls: problematic and misleading baseline measures of effectiveness Chapter 8. Questioning the methodological superiority of ‘placebo’ over ‘active’ controlled trials Chapter 9. Transition to Part III. Examining the paradox that traditional roles for mechanistic reasoning and expert judgment have been up-ended by EBM Chapter 10. A Qualified Defence of the EBM stance on Mechanistic Reasoning Chapter 11. Knowledge that versus knowledge how: situating the EBM position on Expert Clinical Judgment Chapter 12. Moving EBM forward