Abstract

Evidence Based Medicine is a thesis about reasoning: it champions a certain way of thinking about practice, one based not on the particular, not on thecontext-specific, but on broad statistical concerns. It emphasises “the increasing realisation of the power of probabilistic reasoning” to establish “a new epidemiologic standard”. So the claims of the “EBMers” imply a whole position in medical epistemology. But authors seem unwilling to give a detailed exposition, let alone defence of this position to critics. Hence the accusations of arrogance.