Generalizability: beyond plausibility and handwaving.

Full Abstract

The question of how we apply knowledge from biomedical science to medical and public health practice has been the subject of heated debates about generalizability and related concepts, such as applicability and inductive inference. In this essay, I interpret the term from the perspective of two causal models:
determinism and indeterminism. I suggest that theories of generalizability can be formulated on the basis of both models and take the form of testable but unverifiable hypotheses, an attribute that is common to all scientific theories. Nonetheless, there is one noteworthy difference between the two models:
determinism allows one to rationalize a decision to treat a certain kind of patient but only indirectly a decision to treat any particular patient, whereas indeterminism accommodates both types of decisions.

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Author information

Author/s: Shahar, Eyal (E);

Affiliation: Division of Epidemiology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55454, USA. shahar@epi.umn.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Journal of evaluation in clinical practice (J Eval Clin Pract), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2003-May; vol 9 (issue 2) : pp 151-9

Dates: Created 2003/06/05; Completed 2003/10/29; Revised 2004/11/17;

PMID: 12787178, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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