Switch to: References

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. Establishing Causal Claims in Medicine.Jon Williamson - 2019 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 32 (1):33-61.
    Russo and Williamson put forward the following thesis: in order to establish a causal claim in medicine, one normally needs to establish both that the putative cause and putative effect are appropriately correlated and that there is some underlying mechanism that can account for this correlation. I argue that, although the Russo-Williamson thesis conflicts with the tenets of present-day evidence-based medicine, it offers a better causal epistemology than that provided by present-day EBM because it better explains two key aspects of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   26 citations  
  • The Ontic Account of Scientific Explanation.Carl F. Craver - 2014 - In Marie I. Kaiser, Oliver R. Scholz, Daniel Plenge & Andreas Hüttemann (eds.), Explanation in the special science: The case of biology and history. Dordrecht: Springer. pp. 27-52.
    According to one large family of views, scientific explanations explain a phenomenon (such as an event or a regularity) by subsuming it under a general representation, model, prototype, or schema (see Bechtel, W., & Abrahamsen, A. (2005). Explanation: A mechanist alternative. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 36(2), 421–441; Churchland, P. M. (1989). A neurocomputational perspective: The nature of mind and the structure of science. Cambridge: MIT Press; Darden (2006); Hempel, C. G. (1965). Aspects of scientific (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   81 citations  
  • Mechanisms and the Evidence Hierarchy.Brendan Clarke, Donald Gillies, Phyllis Illari, Federica Russo & Jon Williamson - 2014 - Topoi 33 (2):339-360.
    Evidence-based medicine (EBM) makes use of explicit procedures for grading evidence for causal claims. Normally, these procedures categorise evidence of correlation produced by statistical trials as better evidence for a causal claim than evidence of mechanisms produced by other methods. We argue, in contrast, that evidence of mechanisms needs to be viewed as complementary to, rather than inferior to, evidence of correlation. In this paper we first set out the case for treating evidence of mechanisms alongside evidence of correlation in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   100 citations  
  • EnviroGenomarkers: The Interplay Between Mechanisms and Difference Making in Establishing Causal Claims.Federica Russo & Jon Williamson - 2012 - Medicine Studies 3 (4):249-262.
    According to Russo and Williamson (Int Stud Philos Sci 21(2):157–170, 2007, Hist Philos Life Sci 33:389–396, 2011a, Philos Sci 1(1):47–69, 2011b ), in order to establish a causal claim of the form, ‘_C_ is a cause of _E_’, one typically needs evidence that there is an underlying mechanism between _C_ and _E_ as well as evidence that _C_ makes a difference to _E_. This thesis has been used to argue that hierarchies of evidence, as championed by evidence-based movements, tend to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • Causation and melanoma classification.Brendan Clarke - 2011 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 32 (1):19-32.
    In this article, I begin by giving a brief history of melanoma causation. I then discuss the current manner in which malignant melanoma is classified. In general, these systems of classification do not take account of the manner of tumour causation. Instead, they are based on phenomenological features of the tumour, such as size, spread, and morphology. I go on to suggest that misclassification of melanoma is a major problem in clinical practice. I therefore outline an alternative means of classifying (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences.Thomas Heams, Philippe Huneman, Guillaume Lecointre & Marc Silberstein (eds.) - 2014 - Springer.
    The Darwinian theory of evolution is itself evolving and this book presents the details of the core of modern Darwinism and its latest developmental directions. The authors present current scientific work addressing theoretical problems and challenges in four sections, beginning with the concepts of evolution theory, its processes of variation, heredity, selection, adaptation and function, and its patterns of character, species, descent and life. The second part of this book scrutinizes Darwinism in the philosophy of science and its usefulness in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Defining Metabolic Syndrome: Which Kind of Causality, if any, is Required?Margherita Benzi - 2017 - Disputatio 9 (47):553-580.
    The definition of metabolic syndrome has been, and still is, extremely controversial. My purpose is not to give a solution to the associated debate but to argue that the controversy is at least partially due to the different ‘causal content’ of the various definitions: their theoretical validity and practical utility can be evaluated by reconstructing or making explicit the underlying causal structure. I will therefore propose to distinguish the alternative definitions according to the kinds of causal content they carry: definitions (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Medicalization and epistemic injustice.Alistair Wardrope - 2015 - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 18 (3):341-352.
    Many critics of medicalization express concern that the process privileges individualised, biologically grounded interpretations of medicalized phenomena, inhibiting understanding and communication of aspects of those phenomena that are less relevant to their biomedical modelling. I suggest that this line of critique views medicalization as a hermeneutical injustice—a form of epistemic injustice that prevents people having the hermeneutical resources available to interpret and communicate significant areas of their experience. Interpreting the critiques in this fashion shows they frequently fail because they: neglect (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   42 citations  
  • Grading the Quality of Evidence of Mechanisms.Stefan Dragulinescu - 2018 - Dissertation, University of Kent
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Causal Reasoning and Clinical Practice: Challenges from Molecular Biology.Giovanni Boniolo & Raffaella Campaner - 2019 - Topoi 38 (2):423-435.
    Not only has the philosophical debate on causation been gaining ground in the last few decades, but it has also increasingly addressed the sciences. The biomedical sciences are among the most prominent fields that have been considered, with a number of works tackling the understanding of the notion of cause, the assessment of genuinely causal relations and the use of causal knowledge in applied contexts. Far from denying the merits of the debate on causation and the major theories it comprises, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Evidence and the Assessment of Causal Relations in the Health Sciences.Raffaella Campaner & Maria Carla Galavotti - 2012 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 26 (1):27-45.
    This contribution claims that the two fundamental notions of causation at work in the health sciences are manipulative and mechanistic, and investigates what kinds of evidence matter for the assessment of causal relations. This article is a development of our 2007 article, ‘Plurality of Causality’, where we argue for a pluralistic account of causation with an eye to econometrics and a single medical example. The present contribution has a wider focus, and considers the notion of evidence within a whole range (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  • The application of Evidence-Based Medicine methodologies in sports science: problems and solutions.William Levack-Payne - 2022 - Dissertation, University of Kent
    This thesis analyses the use of 'Evidence-Based' methodologies of evidence assessment and intervention and policy design from medicine, and their use in sport and exercise science. It argues that problems exist with the application of Evidence-Based methodologies in sports science, meaning that the quality of evidence used to inform decision-making is lower than is often assumed. This thesis also offers realistic solutions to these problems, broadly arguing for the importance of taking evidence from mechanistic studies seriously, in addition to evidence (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • What is mechanistic evidence, and why do we need it for evidence-based policy?Caterina Marchionni & Samuli Reijula - 2019 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 73:54-63.
    It has recently been argued that successful evidence-based policy should rely on two kinds of evidence: statistical and mechanistic. The former is held to be evidence that a policy brings about the desired outcome, and the latter concerns how it does so. Although agreeing with the spirit of this proposal, we argue that the underlying conception of mechanistic evidence as evidence that is different in kind from correlational, difference-making or statistical evidence, does not correctly capture the role that information about (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  • Mechanistic and Neo-mechanistic Accounts of Causation: How Salmon Already Got (Much of) It Right.Raffaella Campaner - 2013 - Metatheoria – Revista de Filosofía E Historia de la Ciencia 3:81--98.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Manipulative evidence and medical interventions: some qualifications.Raffaella Campaner & Matteo Cerri - 2020 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 42 (2):1-15.
    The notion of causal evidence in medicine has been the subject of wide philosophical debate in recent years. The notion of evidence has been discussed mostly in connection with Evidence Based Medicine and, more in general, with the assessment of causal nexus in medical, and especially research contexts. “Manipulative evidence” is one of the notions of causal evidence that has stimulated much debate. It has been defined in slightly different ways, attributed different relevance, and recently placed at the core of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Research traditions and evolutionary explanations in medicine.Pierre-Olivier Méthot - 2011 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 32 (1):75-90.
    In this article, I argue that distinguishing ‘evolutionary’ from ‘Darwinian’ medicine will help us assess the variety of roles that evolutionary explanations can play in a number of medical contexts. Because the boundaries of evolutionary and Darwinian medicine overlap to some extent, however, they are best described as distinct ‘research traditions’ rather than as competing paradigms. But while evolu- tionary medicine does not stand out as a new scientific field of its own, Darwinian medicine is united by a number of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations