Medical reasoning and doctor-patient communication.

Nineteenth-century American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce offered a picture of the scientific method that can be fruitfully applied to the practice of medical diagnosis. Physicians can use this framework to become more self-consciously aware of what they are doing when they diagnose medical conditions, and they can also learn more about the potential pitfalls of communication between physicians and their patients.

A philosophical analysis of the evidence-based medicine debate.

Background: The term "evidence-based medicine" (or EBM) was introduced about ten years ago, and there has been considerable debate about the value of EBM. However, this debate has sometimes been obscured by a lack of conceptual clarity concerning the nature and status of EBM.

Discussion: First, we note that EBM proponents have obscured the current debate by defining EBM in an overly broad, indeed almost vacuous, manner; we offer a clearer account of EBM and its relation to the alternative approaches to medicine.