Research and medicine: human conjectures at every turn

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Published: Jun 30, 2011
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5750/ijpcm.v1i2.65

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Eyal Shahar
Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA

Abstract

In his book, provocatively titled ‘stats.con’ (not ‘com’), Penston examines the sources of contemporary medical knowledge and attacks them all: randomized trials, observational studies, schools of statistics and more. His text covers a wide range of topics, some of which are as philosophical as determinism and indeterminism and others are as practical as reports of fraudulent studies.  He has done a fair amount of homework and I found myself agreeing with his arguments many times - although not always with his conclusions.  Whether I agreed with him or not, it was refreshing to encounter a courageous author who bluntly states what he thinks.  Penston writes passionately and clearly, which makes it easy to identify both mistakes and points of disagreement.  We need more physicians who genuinely care about epistemology and methodology and don’t just look for a magical P-value.

Article Details

Issue
Vol. 1 No. 2 (2011): June
Section
Regular Articles
Author Biography

Eyal Shahar, Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA

Professor, Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA

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