Causation in evidence-based medicine: in reply to Kerry et al
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Anders Strand1, Veli-Pekka Parkkinen
1Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice
|February 14, 2015
Abstract:
Kerry et al. criticize our discussion of causal knowledge in evidence-based medicine (EBM) and our assessment of the relevance of their dispositionalist ontology for EBM. Three issues need to be addressed in response: (1) problems concerning transfer of causal knowledge across heterogeneous contexts; (2) how predictions about the effects of individual treatments based on population-level evidence from RCTs are fallible; and (3) the relevance of ontological theories like dispositionalism for EBM.