Module: Health, Illness and Society

Topic 7


Topic 7: Evidence-Based Medicine

Objectives

When you have completed the reading and participated in the taught components for this week, we hope you will be able to

  • Consider evidence-based medicine through the lens of the sociology of scientific knowledge
  • Critically question the social, political, economic and technical context within which evidence-based medicine rose to prominence
  • Argue both for and against the further expansion of evidence-based medicine and clinical practice guidelines  

Lecture: The rise and fall of evidence-based medicine

This lecture will be based on the paper by Prof Greenhalgh in the reading list. It will acknowledge evidence-based medicine’s significant contribution to improving health outcomes and also look critically at the social forces with which it is entangled.

Debate: “We need more guidelines”

In this debate, two groups of students will take opposing positions on this motion. There is no ‘right’ answer to the question of course, but we will use the debate format to help develop and apply the skills of sociological analysis of a ‘social movement’ in science.

Click below to discuss:


Preparation for this week

The preparatory task for this week is to develop a view on the emergence of evidence-based medicine and the clinical guidelines movement in your own country and setting. The best way to do this is via a specific clinical example – for example obstetric care, childhood immunisation, diabetes and so on. Some of you will be speaking in the debate and all will be expected to contribute comments.

Set reading

ACADEMIC PAPERS

Greenhalgh T: Why do we always end up here? Evidence-based medicine's conceptual cul-de-sacs and some off-road alternative routes. Journal of Primary Health Care 2012, 4:92-97. (Read it here)

Pope C: Resisting Evidence: The Study of Evidence-Based Medicine as a Contemporary Social Movement. Health: 2003, 7:267-282. (Read it here)

Sackett DL, Rosenberg WC, Gray JAM: Evidence based medicine: what it is and what it isn't. BMJ 1996, 312: 71-72. (Read it here)