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SUMMARY:Why expert judgment isn't evidence: a qualified defence of the EBM
  position - Jeremy Howick (UCL)
DTSTART:20100204T163000Z
DTEND:20100204T180000Z
UID:TALK22041@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Alex Broadbent
DESCRIPTION:The view that experts have special access to knowledge goes ba
 ck at least as far as Plato. In medicine this view has been particularly i
 nfluential: experienced clinicians are often believed to possess tacit kno
 wledge and intuition that cannot be reduced to mechanical rules. The defer
 ence to clinical judgment is reflected in the ways doctors are trained. Af
 ter spending 2 or 3 years studying the basic sciences\, medical students s
 pend the next 2–3 years doing 'clinical' work\, where they are essential
 ly apprentices to more senior (expert) colleagues in the hospital. In star
 k contrast with the more traditional view\, EBM proponents advocate the ep
 istemic superiority of comparative clinical research\, preferably from ran
 domized trials. In this paper\, I will contend that the EBM position on ex
 pert judgment as evidence is well supported by a plethora of largely ignor
 ed studies\, but that other roles for expert judgment are equally importan
 t and deserve more discussion in the EBM literature.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, History and Philosophy of Science\, Department o
 f
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