Most of you probably know that the debate goes on and on. It generates more
titles similar to those heard at the MLA meetings beginning about 25 years
ago.
May I recommend a summary of & commentary on the current topic in:
"A House Built on Sand"
ed. Noretta Koertge
ISBN 0-19-511725-5
Sifting through the stream of ironies, tropes and neologisms Philip Kitcher
tries to make some sense of what is salvageable.
Donald Stanley
> From: Michael Power <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: Michael Power <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2009 07:22:57 +0000
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Fw: Special Issue:Evidence in Evidence-Based Medicine Fw: Social
> Epistemology - informaworld
>
> Thanks Ben
>
> I will comment on your article when I have read it properly, and take it up as
> another thread.
>
> Right now I want to make a few comments on the article "Method as argument:
> boundary work in evidence-based medicine" by Diane Derkatch.
>
> My plan was to comment on each of the articles in the series in Social
> Epistemology, but my enthusiasm is waning as I weigh up the time/benefit
> ratio.
>
> I want to make just three points about Diane Derkatch's paper, which haven't
> been made by others (or by myself in previous posts).
>
> "Diane Derkatch is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of
> British Columbia, where she studies rhetoric of science, health and medicine."
>
> Kerkatch says "the notion of efficacy can function as a rhetorically mobile
> boundary object that can redefine the very terms of debate". And elaborates:
> " measures intended to ensure objectivity can be actively manipulated to
> produce desired results; in such circumstances,
> efficacy takes on new meaning, literally, because it comes to mean whatever
> the triallists
> engineer it to mean."
>
>
> 1) Tu quoque
> I shall ignore the straw man rhetoric (this was discussed by Frances Gardner).
>
> Kerkatch, Grossman, and I suspect the other authors in this series, engineer
> the meaning of EBM to fit the purposes of their argument. Their concept of EBM
> is not the concept that I have learned from the people who develop and teach
> EBM. To paraphrase Kerkatch, the notion of EBM can function as a rhetorically
> mobile boundary object that can redefine the very terms of debate.
>
> Kerkatch thus scores an own goal by inviting a tu quoque (you too) rhetorical
> response.
>
>
>
> 2) Non sequitur
>
> Kerkatch uses an example of an RCT of acupuncture to complain that
> "Traditional acupuncture theory is wholly absent in the report and the authors
> only gesture toward the intervention's potential mechanism in the Discussion,
> where they cite several biochemical possibilities. The absence of any
> underlying theory in the Methods section makes the authors' careful
> description of the needle manipulation protocol seem strangely
> undermotivated."
>
> But, she does not explain why this matters. There is a good reason why RCTs do
> not discuss theory in their methods sections: they are designed to answer the
> question "Does it work?", not the question "How does it work?".
>
> For example, the design of an RCT to assess homeopathy for some condition
> would not change depending on whether the homeopath believed in the "memory of
> water" theory or the "quantum entanglement" theory.
>
> So, the complaint that theory is absent from methods section is a non
> sequitur.
>
>
>
> 3) Evidence-lite
>
> Kerkatch's aim is to "frame the problem of method as a fundamentally
> rhetorical problem ...".
>
> There are about 67 citations in the list of references. Two of these are RCTs.
> In one of the RCTs the bit in the methods section that describes how
> acupuncture needles were inserted is quoted.
>
> If I were to write a paper on the rhetoric of the metaphysical_poets, and say
> that Andrew Marvell and John Donne were metaphysical poets, and quote one line
> of "Death be not proud", I would not have demonstrated much knowledge and
> understanding of their poetry and rhetoric, even if I cited 65 eminent
> critics.
>
>
>
>
> Thankfully I haven't the time to go on any further, other than to remark that
> the rhetoric of rhetorical analysis can illuminate some of its deficiencies.
>
> Michael
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Djulbegovic, Benjamin [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: 05 January 2009 22:19
> To: Michael Power; [log in to unmask]
> Subject: RE: Fw: Special Issue:Evidence in Evidence-Based Medicine Fw: Social
> Epistemology - informaworld
>
> Btw, here is our response to John Ioannidis' article you cited...
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