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Are we doing any good by doing really well? (Where's the Bacon?)
Author(s) -
Herbert Donald
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
medical physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.473
H-Index - 180
eISSN - 2473-4209
pISSN - 0094-2405
DOI - 10.1118/1.1555493
Subject(s) - observational study , estate , action (physics) , promotion (chess) , production (economics) , medical literature , medicine , political science , economics , law , physics , pathology , quantum mechanics , politics , macroeconomics
Francis Bacon, who with Rene Decartes laid the intellectual foundations for Western science in the seventeenth century, asserted that the purpose of all knowledge is “ action in the production of works for…the relief of man's estate.” We assess briefly several aspects of a few of the current efforts directed to the production of such “ works ” with respect to such “ relief ” as they may provide: cancer mortality, the medical literature, evidence‐based medicine, clinical trials, observational databases and criteria for the promotion and tenure of the medical faculty. We suggest why each of these efforts appears to have failed to some degree and then propose some measures that may possibly serve as correctives.