(July 5, 2023 at 4:28 pm)Helios Wrote:(July 5, 2023 at 2:19 pm)FlatAssembler Wrote: The philosophy of evidence-based medicine was, ahem, inspired by the case of Ignaz Semmelweis. Semmelweis made a study which was widely perceived as flawed and having implausible conclusions... but which turned out, decades later, to be right (when Louis Pasteur formulated the Germ Theory, which gave a convincing theoretical explanation for the Semmelweis'es findings).This is false evidence-based medicine came well before Ignaz Semmelweis and if it was true it was a crude and flawed method of which shouldn't be relied upon. Glecks study is dog do do and can be soundly rejected till it's demonstrated to be correct. Till then we have no reliable data and thus no real conclusion.
You need to understand that all the arguments about empirical matters are to a higher or a lesser degree flawed. Take a look at the Aristotel's arguments for the Earth being round and how Flat-Earthers think they are flawed. Ships disappear bottom first? Maybe that's an illusion caused by waves. Constellations shift as you move north or south? Maybe that's caused by stars being only 3'100 miles up in the sky. The shadow on the Moon during lunar eclipse is round? Maybe that shadow is not the Earth's shadow, but of some other celestial body.
You don't get to reject a study just based on its perceived flaws. You need to point to a better study.
