Uncertainty and Explanation in Medicine and the Health Sciences

This book offers a comprehensive account ofhow uncertainty is tackled in medicine and the health sciences.OlafDammannexploresrecent accounts of medicine as ineffective and suggests that the impression that medicine does not achieve its goal is, at least in part, due to the aleatoric (natural) uncertainty of biomedical processes and the subsequent epistemic (cognitive) uncertainty of those who desire solid information about such processes.Dammannshows howconcepts like inference, explanation, and causometry help mitigate this disconnect.He points toward the possibility that some of the statistically rigid and formalized approaches (such as the randomized controlled trial as the gold standard for the justification of medical interventions)mightbetter be replaced by approaches that emphasizethe coherence of evidenceand the people's needs forhelpfulhealth interventions (auxiliarianism).