Debatable perspective

In response to “Debates: what good are they?” (Can Fam Physician 2007;53(9):1407), to be only half-way cynical, they—debates that is—fit right in with the ethos of Western capitalism: they sell! They sell newsprint, magazines, journals, electronic media time-space, and whatever else on the planet. Don’t believe for a minute that a spate of Pablum-like, all-agreed-to data will sell as well as vigorously-voiced, bitingly contrary opinion, no matter how confusing be the result to the scholarly-minded like Dr Ladouceur and others, myself included. Look through a prism from angle X at floral data A and conclude rose; look at the same floral data A from angle Y (or maybe again from angle X!) and call the conclusion petunia. What’s in a word?

Perhaps it has been with the (admittedly more obscure) motive of quelling debate that we’ve invented this new-ish but highly influential doctrine of supposedly undeniable scientific truth—“evidence-based” medicine. After all, who could possibly debate with conclusions that spring from the grail of “evidence,” as opposed to conclusions that arise from an individual’s own curious mixture of, say, sensory bias, cultural interpretation, and “expert opinion”? What I’m driving at, of course, is that we see and interpret all incoming information through a set of unique and personal filters, which often results in different conclusions being drawn (surprise, surprise); if these differing conclusions seek dissemination along a given avenue, “debate” might ensue. I think I’ll found my own school of scientific thought and name it “interpretation of evidence”–based medicine, with or without the lead-off first-person adjective of “my.” Maybe I’ll be its only adherent. Oh, come on, lighten up and debate that as an entirely silly concept or waste of time, if you will. Some publisher (and his backing advertisers) is sure to find it a square inch or two.

Yours sincerely (and with only partial tongue-in-cheek),

• Copyright© the College of Family Physicians of Canada