Throughout my career as a philosopher of medicine, I have taken a special interest in hierarchies of evidence as used in Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) and beyond. My critique of evidence hierarchies has adapted and developed alongside recent movements towards a less rigid hierarchalism in EBM, and with the development of …
In 1972, Archie Cochrane published Effectiveness and Efficiency: Random Reflections on Health Services. In a little under 86 pages, Cochrane offers a wide-ranged but succinct delivery of his experience and his philosophy of evidence in clinical practice. It’s a fascinating gallop through the concerns of one of the most influential figures …
I have written extensively on hierarchies of evidence in evidence-based medicine. The origin story of hierarchies of evidence is a little contentious. Several sources in EBM cite Campbell and Stanley’s 1963 classic “Experimental and Quasi-experimental Designs for Research” as containing the first hierarchy, or at least the germ of the …
