University of Oxford Short Courses for Professionals

History and Philosophy of Evidence-Based Health Care: 16 – 20 July 2012

Applications are now open for this new accredited short course exploring the history and philosophy of Evidence-Based Health Care, including randomisation (the rationale and history of comparing like with like), double blinding and placebo controls, the evolution of scientifically-defensible methods of information synthesis and whether average results apply to individuals.

Highlights include:

The introduction of measures to ensure that like will be compared with like in treatment comparisons: Sir Iain Chalmers (James Lind Initiative)
What are the explicit (and hidden) ways in which values come into (or should come into) EBHC?: Bill Fulford (University of Oxford)
The introduction of quantification and formal comparisons in assessing the effects of treatments: Ulrich Tröhler (James Lind Library)
Scepticism and the problem of induction: Jeremy Howick (Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine)

With guest speakers:

Professor Rom Harré (University of Oxford), Professor Mike Clarke (Chair of Research Methodology and Director of the MRC all-Ireland Hub for Trials Methodology Research at Queen's University, Belfast), and Professor Mike Kelly (Director of the Centre of Public Health Excellence at National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE)).

“History of science without philosophy of science is blind … philosophy of science without history of science is empty” – Norwood Russell Hanson

Full details: www.conted.ox.ac.uk/hpebhc