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Evidence Based Medicine: reasoned criticism of a monopoly Volume 10, issue 1, Janvier 2014

Author
Médecin généraliste, Lyon

After millennia of subjective fantasies, the concept of evidence has emerged in the therapeutic field, less than two centuries ago. With the development of the pathologies treated, the influence of statistics and the development of public health, the population and probabilistic approaches have eventually dominated therapeutics and now dominate all publications and all medical teachings. Let us not deny the actual contributions of EBM. But a reasonable critic of its monopoly is not synonymous with obscurantism. There are even many situations where the EBM should never be used as a reference. The strangest monopoly of EBM is that the submission to its form became as despotic as the submission to its background. Today, it would be beneficial to have an epistemologic, clinical, social, economic, or political reflection before the implementation of any research or publication in the fields of medicine and care.