Empirie und Dogma in den <> medizinischer Wissenschaft.

Empiric and Dogmatic 'Seasons' in the Progress of Medical ScienceThe current 'postmodern' times are not simply permissive towards any theory whatever. In medicine, the 'external validity' of theories and the exact place of various healing schools has become an important subject. 'Critical appraisal' of the empiric evidence for treatment benefit in all areas of medicine, conventional or unconventional, will separate the wheat from the chaff. Pluralistic evidence-based medicine constitutes the flail for achieving this task. This happens in late summer. Later in winter, the chaff of useless medicine will decay; a new therapeutic spring will only be possible when the current task of identifying effective and beneficial treatments in all areas and of abandoning useless therapies will be fulfilled. The current primacy of the empiric study of medicine, rather than the dogmatic, should not be misunderstood as a pure empirism. Rather, we are in the empiric 'season'. Questions about mechanisms of action will remain, but will retreat to the back of the mind for some time.