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What Theories Are Tested in Clinical Trials?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Spencer Phillips Hey
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Abstract

John Worrall and Nancy Cartwright have both argued that randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are “testing the wrong theory.” They claim that RCTs are designed to test inferences about the causal relationships in the study population, but this does not guarantee a justified inference about the causal relationships in the more diverse population in clinical practice. In this article I argue that the epistemology of theory testing in trials is more complicated than either Worrall’s or Cartwright’s accounts suggest. I illustrate this more complex theoretical structure with case studies in medical theory testing from Alzheimer’s research and anticancer drugs in personalized medicine.

Type
Medicine
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 82 , Issue 5 , December 2015 , pp. 1318 - 1329
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

This research received support under the PACEOMICS project, funded by Genome Canada, Genome Quebec, Genome Alberta, and the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR). I would like to thank Georgina Freeman, Jonathan Kimmelman, Julie Walsh, and the audience at the 2014 Philosophy of Science Association meeting for constructive feedback on the earlier drafts of this manuscript.

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