)Sent with apologies to my good friends and colleagues at the University of
Ottawa who have been steadfastly been aiding the development of
evidence-based medicine.... These colleagues had nothing to do with the
paper mentioned below....)
The following email has been circulating.
It describes a mind-bendingly post-modern paper, published in a seemingly
respectable health care journal, which likens proponents of evidence-based
medicine to fascists.
The paper is real, and is available on the web. The abstract below is
representative. As best as I can tell, the paper was not a hoax of a satire.
It seems to be an example, albeit perhaps isolated, of where the march of
post-modernism in academia may lead....
>>This (link to pdf below) is a recent paper which I first took to be a hoax.
>>Apparently they are serious...
>>
>>Newspeak rating: Doubleplus ungood.
>>
>>"Deconstructing the evidence-based discourse in health sciences: truth,
>>power and fascism"
>>- Dave Holmes RN PhD,1 Stuart J Murray PhD,2 Amélie Perron RN
>>PhD(cand)1 and Geneviève Rail PhD1
>>1 Faculty of Health Sciences, School of Nursing, University of Ottawa,
>>Ottawa, and 2 Department of English, Ryerson University Toronto, Ontario,
>>Canada.
>>
>>Abstract
>>Background:
>>'Drawing on the work of the late French philosophers Deleuze and
>>Guattari, the objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the
>>evidence-based movement in the health sciences is outrageously exclusionary
>>and dangerously normative with regards to scientific knowledge.
>>As such, we assert that the evidence-based movement in health sciences
>>constitutes a good example of microfascism at play in the contemporary
>>scientific arena.'
>>Objective:
>>'The philosophical work of Deleuze and Guattari proves to be useful in
>>showing how health sciences are colonised (territorialised) by an
>>all-encompassing
>>scientific research paradigm - that of post-positivism - but also and
>>foremost in showing the
>>process by which a dominant ideology comes to exclude alternative forms
>>of knowledge,
>>therefore acting as a fascist structure.'
>>Conclusion:
>>'The Cochrane Group, among others, has created a hierarchy that has been
>>endorsed by many academic institutions, and that serves to (re)produce the
>>exclusion of certain forms of research. Because 'regimes of truth' such
>>as the
>>evidence-based movement currently enjoy a privileged status, scholars
>>have not only a scientific
>>duty, but also an ethical obligation to deconstruct these regimes of power.'
>>Key words: critique, deconstruction, evidence-based, fascism, health
>>sciences, power.
>>http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Pharmacology/dc-bits/holmes-deconstruction-ebhc-06.pdf
>>Or:
>>http://tinyurl.com/fdbry
>>
>>Some comments on this paper-
>>The Quack Page (under 'worse than Barry'):
>>http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Pharmacology/dc-bits/quack.html#holmes1
>>badscience.net:
>>http://www.badscience.net/?p=277
>
Roy M. Poses MD
Clinical Associate Professor
Brown University School of Medicine
<[log in to unmask]>
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