Toward a philosophy of cancer research

Every theory and all research assumes, either explicitly or implicitly, a scientific philosophy. Making the philosophy of cancer research explicit is likely to improve our understanding both of what we know and what we still need to discover. The implications for cancer research of three different philosophies of science are therefore outlined here: 1) reduction-mechanism; 2) holism; and 3) complementarity. We show that each of these philosophies leads to a different notion of causation, a different expectation of what represents a valid explanation of cancer, and thus to different problems that are addressed by different types of experiments. We conclude that the development of an appropriate philosophy of science is not only a relevant but necessary element in research on carcinogenesis.