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Drawing on the work of the late French philosophers Deleuze and Guattari, the objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the evidence-based movement in the health sciences is outrageously exclusionary and dangerously normative with regards to scientific knowledge. As such, we assert that the evidence-based movement in health sciences constitutes a good example of microfascism at play in the contemporary scientific arena.

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Please, like my field doesn't have enough trouble legitimizing itself without dealing with these quacks.

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The all-embracing economy of such ideology lends the Cochrane Group’s disciples a profound sense of entitlement, what they take as a universal right to control the scientific agenda. By a so-called scientific consensus, this ‘regime of truth’ ostracises those with ‘deviant’ forms of knowledge, labelling them as rebels and rejecting their work as scientifically unsound. This reminds us of a famous statement by President George W Bush in light of the September 11 events: "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." In the context of the EBM, this absolutely polarising world view resonates vividly: embrace the EBHS or else be condemned as recklessly non-scientific.

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What?

And more whack-job rhetoric where that came from. To be fair, it's kind of sweet. Trying to make sure medicine opens its mind to the possibilities of broader science. Of course, their advice to just get rid of that pesky "evidence" does sound a little fishy to the inexpert ear...

[ 14 August 2006: Message edited by: Catchfire ]

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"The philosophical work of Deleuze and Guattari proves to be useful in showing how health sciences are colonised (territorialised) by an all-encompassing scientific research paradigm – that of post-positivism – but also and foremost in showing the process by which a dominant ideology comes to exclude alternative forms of knowledge, therefore acting as a fascist structure."

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Well, okay, I concede that point, however, if the capitalist paradigm of discourse holds, we have to choose between social realism and Foucaultist power relations. Thus, the premise of Lyotardist narrative holds that art is used to marginalize minorities.

Any number of desemanticisms concerning Marxist class may be found. In a sense, Lyotard’s critique of Lyotardist narrative suggests that the purpose of the artist is deconstruction, but only if reality is distinct from narrativity; otherwise, government is fundamentally a legal fiction.

Several narratives concerning a neostructural whole exist. It could be said that the subject is interpolated into a cultural subtextual theory that includes culture as a paradox.

Lacan promotes the use of social realism to deconstruct class divisions. In a sense, a number of theories concerning Marxist class may be revealed.

I was almost impressed.

[ 14 August 2006: Message edited by: jas ]

People who dismiss the place of philosophy in science have a poor understanding of science.

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I find it somewhat boring when people who desribe themselves as sceptics seem incapable of turing a critical eye on logical positivism, science. They are not sceptics but dogmatics blind to their own bias.

People who dismiss the place of philosophy in science have a poor understanding of science.

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It's not that science doesn't exist -- it's more a question of why these particular sciences in these particular ways. Look at how midwifery has been criminalized, controlled, and finally legalized (well, in Ontario at least) & practiced. Quite a different medical model, but no less "scientific".

Oh, and a favourite quote from Bruno Latour (who ain't no Foucauldian, either) in We Have Never Been Modern, talking about the social production of science and how scientists act as interpreters:

There is no unpacking of so-called "evidence-based health care" nor any proffered evidence as to why its "all-encompassing scientific research paradigm" should be rejected, except that Foucault and Deleuze say that most hegemonies should be. Maybe.

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Originally posted by mersh:
Maybe these authors need more discipline?

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Micro-fascist!

Ouch!

[ 14 August 2006: Message edited by: mersh ]

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What on God's green Earth are you talking about?

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Science has philosophical roots and that are based in historical and cultural context. If you dismiss or misunderstand the philosophy of science than you misunderstand science. Science is a method of enquiry not a god given path to the meaning of life the universe and everything.

I was saying I was bored when there are knee-jerk attacks against humanities by people who consider themselves "pro-science" I frequently find these discussions as the one outlined in the original link to be simplistic and sophomoric. It often degrades to under-graduate level dichotomies of science vs. humaniites, which is interpreted as facts/truth vs. incoherent ramblings.

In terms of the article I think it does raise some valid points critiquing science as ideology.

Yes there is jargon what academic article is free of jargon. It is again worthwhile noting that the tendency is to attack the jargon of critcal theory but ignore or rationalize the use scientific jargon.

Admittedly the use of the term fascism is perhaps clumsy or overdone, however, it is worthwhile to note that attacks on this article certainly appear reactionary.

In terms of colonization I am not so sure the usage is out of place considering the place of western science and medicine has played and continues to play in western colonization.

For me, the authors risk overstating their argument by insisting on one dominant, coherent system that is applied consistenty by all involved, in a top-down manner. This may be how a particular practice gets represented, but to take it at its word gets into a power vs resistance argument, perhaps assigning it even more instrumental power. I also think there's a danger in presenting Foucault (& Deleuze & Guattari) as solely dealing with discipline & control. There's some interesting work from & about them that looks at how freedom is also used as a means of governing (particularly under liberalism & neo-liberalism) -- I'd've like to see a nod in that direction, but that's just me.

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If you dismiss or misunderstand the philosophy of science than you misunderstand science.

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The philosophy of science? You mean, like, the basic assumption that the natural world behaves in a consistent way? That science can never prove that the universe wasn't created by a prankster god exactly 35 seconds ago?

I readily dismiss that.

Of course science stems historically from philosophy, but the two parted ways in the 17th century when the former started insisting on things like prediction validation and repeatable results.

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I was saying I was bored when there are knee-jerk attacks against humanities by people who consider themselves "pro-science" I frequently find these discussions as the one outlined in the original link to be simplistic and sophomoric.

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Maybe. I haven't really witnessed much in the way of knee-jerk attacks. There is a lot of scientific self-defense, though, when someone tries to present something unscientific as if it was in fact real science.

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In terms of the article I think it does raise some valid points critiquing science as ideology.

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Such as?

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I also agree that Evidence Based medicine is not all is seems to be. One only needs to examine the claims of evidence provided by psychiatry to see how profoundly bad science and outright intellectual fraud gets passed off as evidence based.

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Please tell me you're not a scientologist.

[ 14 August 2006: Message edited by: Proaxiom ]

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Please tell me you're not a scientologist.

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Oh grow up

Anyone who has a critique of psychiatry is automatically a scientogist , how informed , how rational how well thought out.

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The philosophy of science? You mean, like, the basic assumption that the natural world behaves in a consistent way? That science can never prove that the universe wasn't created by a prankster god exactly 35 seconds ago?

I readily dismiss that.

Of course science stems historically from philosophy, but the two parted ways in the 17th century when the former started insisting on things like prediction validation and repeatable results.

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Logical positivism and empiricism are philosophical approaches you cannot separate them from science, even though physics has rejected positivism.

Anyways I'm not really in the mood to have a debate with someone who has an afterschool special understanding of science, philosophy or history, perhaps you could go to an undergraduate coffee shop and carry on.

[ 14 August 2006: Message edited by: N.R.KISSED ]

[ 14 August 2006: Message edited by: N.R.KISSED ]

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NRK, I resepct where you're coming from, but the fact is, this article is poorly written, and makes little or no claim beyond vague, thinly referenced and otherwise quite common postmodernist theories (point of information: poststructuralism generally refers to anything after the formalist, or New Criticism of the 1950s, of which postmodernism takes part--while quite similar and overlapping, they are not precisely interchangeable).

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Oh I agree it is not very well- written but we need to be honest that there is a great deal of mediocre to poor academic writing in all disciplines

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Anyways I'm not really in the mood to have a debate with someone who has an afterschool special understanding of science, philosophy or history, perhaps you could go to an undergraduate coffee shop and carry on.

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Oh, sorry. I didn't realize I was questioning someone who is too smart to talk to me.

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A BwO is made in such a way that it can be occupied, populated only by intensities. Only intensities pass and circulate. Still, the BwO is not a scene, a place, or even a support upon which something comes to pass. It has noth­ing to do with phantasy, there is nothing to interpret. The BwO causes intensities to pass; it produces and distributes them in a spatium that is itself intensive, lacking extension. It is not space, nor is it in space; it is matter that occupies space to a given degree—to the degree corresponding to the intensities produced. It is nonstratified, unformed, intense matter, the matrix of intensity, intensity = 0; but there is nothing negative about that zero, there are no negative or opposite intensities. Matter equals energy. Production of the real as an intensive magnitude starting at zero. That is why we treat the BwO as the full egg before the extension of the organism and the organization of the organs, before the formation of the strata; as the intense egg defined by axes and vectors, gradients and thresholds, by dynamic tendencies involving energy transformation and kinematic movements involving group displacement, by migrations: all independent of accessory forms because the organs appear and function here only as pure intensities.7 The organ changes when it crosses a threshold, when it changes gradient. "No organ is constant as regards either function or posi­tion, . . . sex organs sprout anywhere, … rectums open, defecate and close, ... the entire organism changes color and consistency in split-second adjustments."8 The tantric egg.

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Needless to say, my experiment in reading Anti-Oedipus years after my first academic experience with it is not proving to be much more enlightening than the first.

Then again, if I spent more time reading it and less time worrying about the sunbeams in my anus, my comprehension might be better.

[ 14 August 2006: Message edited by: Olly ]

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Oh, sorry. I didn't realize I was questioning someone who is too smart to talk to me.

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You call me a scientologist and expect me to be kindly disposed to you?

"questioning"

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Then again, if I spent more time reading it and less time worrying about the sunbeams in my anus, my comprehension might be better.

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I wouldn't know about that (Ok, I might. A little.) But my own reading of Deleuze (and Guattari) is pretty limited, mostly just A Thousand Plateaus and different bits and pieces, mostly related to Deleuze's notion of control societies -- which the authors of the article that started this thread could have put to creative use -- whereby control & agency are delegated to machines/non-human thingies. Which reminds me of somecrazy shit by Latour on the politics of doors.

[ 14 August 2006: Message edited by: mersh ]