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Epidemiological Evidence: Use at Your ‘Own Risk’?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Jonathan Fuller
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Abstract

What meaning does epidemiological evidence have for the individual? In evidence-based medicine, epidemiological evidence measures the patient’s risk of the outcome or the change in risk due to an intervention. The patient’s risk is commonly understood as an individual probability. The problem of understanding epidemiological evidence and risk thus becomes the challenge of interpreting individual patient probabilities. I argue that the patient’s risk is interpreted ontically, as a propensity. After exploring formidable problems with this interpretation in the medical context, I propose an epistemic reinterpretation of individual patient probabilities as credences. On this view, epidemiological evidence informs medical uncertainty.

Type
Biological Sciences and Medicine
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 87 , Issue 5: PSA 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 biennial meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II Symposia Papers , December 2020 , pp. 1119 - 1129
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

Thanks to Alex Broadbent, Steven Goodman, Stephanie Harvard, Stephen John, Richard Kravitz, David Spiegelhalter, Jacob Stegenga, and Mark Tonelli, as well as audiences at the 2018 Philosophy of Science Association biennial meeting in Seattle, the University of Toronto, the University of Bordeaux, and the University of Pittsburgh for helpful feedback and discussion.

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