This will get you started https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence-based_medicine
Evidence based medicine. An idea that is really less than 50 years old, and still strugging to gain widespread acceptance.
Evidence based medicine. An idea that is really less than 50 years old, and still strugging to gain widespread acceptance.
I pretty much literally facepalmed; luckily she interpreted that as agreeing with her...
It seems to me that the problem here is that our industry, built around throwing expensive drugs at problems, paying for results and lobbying governments and insurance companies is ripe for abuse of "science".
That said, "pure" science is about more than published papers: it's about taking the data and observations you have and constructing the most likely theories and explanations around the observed evidence. If we had a capability to separate funding (and emotions) from research we might be able to produce good results given enough open data (which is itself a challenge).
As an uninformed software developer, I think medicine is a field where machine learning based tools will shine: ethical ("hippa") issues aside, we eventually might be able to feed all observed data, from diagnosis to results years after treatment into computer systems which might be able to make sense of the data and allow us to construct conclusions of the data unbiased by personal and business incentives.
Obviously our current eco-policital climate is strewn with roadblocks, but just wanted to put it out there that science doesn't have to lead us down this path if done right.
It's also a flawed notion. There has been a concerted push in the last 50 years, but applying the scientific method to medicine is considerably older. Koch's Postulates, for example, were published in 1890.
Evidence-based Medicine is applying the scientific method to the practice of medicine.
Please read the link before spreading misinformation.
You could ask for clarification before simply assuming I don't know what I'm talking about.
Furthermore, I'd suggest that understanding disease and understanding the practice of medicine are far more entangled than your division suggests.