[ExI] Evidence-based medicine lacks solid supporting evidence

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Thu, Sep 17, 2015 at 11:36 AM, Dan <danust2012 at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/evidence-based-medicine-lacks-solid-supporting-evidence
>
>
### I disagree with the thrust of the article. Sure, you can produce shoddy
evidence, which will lead to poor outcomes. But this is not a reason to
reject the idea of using evidence to guide action but rather, obviously, a
reason to pay attention to the quality of evidence you are using.

The call to use "mechanistic" reasoning in medicine is particularly
wrong-headed. Mechanistic reasoning is useful if you actually know the
mechanism. In chemistry, it means running molecular dynamics or even
quantum mechanics simulations. In medicine we don't know most mechanisms
and this is why the black-box approach of evidence-based medicine is for
now the only one that works.

Rafał
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