Selected publications
In ‘Unexpected findings and promoting monocausal claims, a cautionary tale’, published in Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, Samantha Copeland discusses the Norwegian rituximab trials, a case from research on chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). She argues that, when an unexpected finding occurs in clinical practice or medical research, the value of following up on that finding is to be found not in the projected value of a singular causal relationship inferred from the finding, but rather in the process of research that follows.
In the same issue, Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum have written ‘A philosophical argument against evidence-based policy’. They argue that the policy side of evidence-based medicine is a form of rule utilitarianism, which collapses under scrutiny. They conclude that a utility maximizer should always ignore the rule in a case where greater benefit can be secured through doing so. But this involves discarding the rule and instead considering each case individually, which is what the rule was supposed to discourage.
Another CauseHealth publication is by Rani Lill Anjum, titled ‘Evidence based or person centered? An ontological debate’ in European Journal of Person Centered Healthcare. Here, she argues that person centered healthcare should be regarded as a radical alternative to the existing medical paradigm of EBM, since the two seem committed to conflicting ontologies. The paper attempts to make explicit some of the most fundamental assumptions that motivate EBM and person centered healthcare in order to show that the choice between them ultimately comes down to ontological preference.
In the new EBM thematic issue of Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, Elena Rocca has published the paper 'Bridging the boundaries between scientists and clinicians- mechanistic hypotheses and patient stories in risk assessment of drugs'.
Web
CauseHealth YouTube channel
Videos by JackAChew and TPMPodcast
Rani Lill Anjum discusses Causation and Correlation – A Smart Drug Smarts podcast
What Evidence? Whoose Evidence? And On What Basis? Rani Lill Anjum on what’s wrong with evidence-based medicine for The Philosophers’ Magazine
Causation in Scientific Methods – A BJPS blog by Rani Lill Anjum
Er vi på vei bort fra evidensbasert medisin? Se foredraget Rani Lill Anjum holdt på Medisinsk Filosofisk Forum Nord i april her
NMBU Researchers, A Quick Introduction to Causation – Interview with Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum