This tag is for questions about concerns related to the philosophy behind evidence-based medicine. It's not for the average question whether a specific drug works if that question doesn't have consequences for arguments about the nature of evidence-based medicine.
Questions tagged [philosophy-of-ebm]
7 questions
31
votes
2 answers
Is the use of parachutes supported by peer-reviewed papers?
While googling about Ben Goldacre, I came across the following reductio ad absurdum argument:
Nerd, can you point me to the data that shows that wearing a parachute increases your life expectancy when jumping out of a plane? You see, someone…
Andrew Grimm
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23
votes
1 answer
Is osteopathic medicine evidence based?
There seems to be a lot of conflation of osteopathic medicine with other alternative medicines, even questions about whether or not it is an alternative medicine or mainstream. In the U.S. osteopathic physicians (D.O.) have all the rights and…
John Rhoades
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22
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3 answers
Does conventional medicine only treat the symptoms?
From here:
Modern Western Medicine is all about chasing symptoms, rarely addressing causes...
and from here:
Western medicine misses the point and attacks symptoms, not root causes
Western medicine focuses on the symptoms. [...] Very rarely does…
Quora Feans
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16
votes
2 answers
Do physicians that use the paradigm of evidence-based medicine achieve better health outcomes for their patients?
From the 1992 paper that introduced the term evidence-based medicine:
Evidence-based medicine de-emphasizes intuition, unsystematic clinical experience, and pathophysiologic rationale as sufficient grounds for clinical decision making and stresses…
Christian
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15
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4 answers
Does FDA not test anything in order to approve it?
I watched something a bit back and was thinking about one of the claims this morning as I listened to SGU on the way to work. I unfortunately can't recall the source anymore, but am fairly confident that it was either Food, Inc., Sweet Remedy, or…
Hendy
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12
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2 answers
Are the vast majority of medical procedures routinely used by physicians ineffective and unproven?
An organization called Freedom Health Canada makes an extraordinary claim on their website, which can be found here.
“Scientifically controlled clinical trials have shown that only 10 -20 % of all procedures used in present-day medical practices…
LanceLafontaine
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1 answer
Has medical prescribing become dominated by marketing rather than evidence?
Recent books by critics of the pharmaceutical industry (such as David Healy's Pharmageddon and Ben Goldacre's Bad Pharma) have highlighted problems in the way the industry promotes its products.
In a 2010 article in Bioethical Enquiry, Spielmans and…
matt_black
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