Priors and prejudice

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics

Volumn 20, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 319-327

  Upshur, R E G ^a  

^a at the University of Toronto Wagner is also a faculty member of the Canadian Medical Associations' Physician Management Institute   (Canada)

Author keywords

Bayes Theorem; Clinical reasoning; Evidence based medicine; Hermeneutics; Philosophy of medicine; Probability

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; BAYES THEOREM; EVIDENCE BASED MEDICINE; MEDICAL DECISION MAKING; MEDICAL ETHICS; PHILOSOPHY; PROBABILITY; SYSTEM ANALYSIS;

BAYES THEOREM; DECISION SUPPORT TECHNIQUES; EVIDENCE-BASED MEDICINE; HUMANS; PHILOSOPHY, MEDICAL; PREJUDICE; PROBABILITY;

EID: 0032846789     PISSN: 13867415     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1009905701990     Document Type: Article

References (22)

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2. See for example, Sackett DL, Haynes RB, Tugwell P, Guyatt G. Clinical Epidemiology: A Basic Science for Clinical Medicine, 2nd edn. Boston: Little, Brown, 1991. See also Fletcher RH, Fletcher SW, Wagner EH. Clinical Epidemiology: The Essentials, 3rd edn. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1996.
3. See for example, Sackett DL, Haynes RB, Tugwell P, Guyatt G. Clinical Epidemiology: A Basic Science for Clinical Medicine, 2nd edn. Boston: Little, Brown, 1991. See also Fletcher RH, Fletcher SW, Wagner EH. Clinical Epidemiology: The Essentials, 3rd edn. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1996.
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10. Savage L. The Fundations of Statistics Reconsidered, in Kyburg H, Smokier H eds. Studies in Subjective Probability. New York: Wiley, 1964.
11. Bayes rule takes the following familiar form: P(H/E) = P(E/H)P(H)/P(E).
12. Kyburg and Smokler 1964, also see Howson C, Urbach P. Scientific Reasoning: The Bayesian Perspective. La Salle: Open Court, 1989.
13. See note 2. Sackett et al., Fletcher and Fletcher.
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18. Gadamer HG. Truth and Method. New York: The Seabury Press, 1975, p. 240.
19. Peirce, C.S. holds a strikingly similar view: We cannot begin with complete doubt. We must begin with all the prejudices which we actually have when we enter upon the study of philosophy. These prejudices are not to be dispelled by a maxim, for they are things which it does not occur to us can be questioned. Hence this initial scepticism will be a mere self-deception, and not real doubt; and no-one who follows the Cartesian method will ever be satisfied until he has formally recovered all those beliefs which in form he has given up. . . . A person may, it is true, in the course of his studies find reason to doubt what he began by believing; but in that case he doubts because he has a positive reason for it and not because of the Cartesian maxim." Some Consequences of Four Incapacities, in Buchler, J. ed. Philosophical Writings of Peirce. New York: Dover Publications, 1955 pp. 228-229.
20. Gadamer op cit., p. 245.
21. See note 3.
22. Sackett DL, Rosenberg WMC, Muir Gray JA et al. Evidence-based medicine: What it is and what it isn't. British Medical Journal 1996; 312: 71-72.