EBM in der Krise? Ein Kommentar zur Notwendigkeit zeithistorischer medizinischer Analysen der evidence-based medicine

Abstract

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is in a state of crisis. This message was brought forward in a recent, widely discussed paper in the British Medical Journal published in 1014 by prominent representatives of the EBM-movement itself. The authors also present a way out of the crisis: a return to the original founding principles of EBM. They sketch an image of both a golden past and a golden future of real evidence-based medicine that we, as historians, find rather problematic. We therefore aim to inform the current debate about the crisis of EBM historically by describing four ways in which EBM has evolved in the past 25 years.