Abstract
BackgroundThis article aims to offer, on the basis of Coherence theory, the epistemological proposition that mutually supportive evidence from multiple systematic reviews may successfully refute radical, philosophical scepticism.MethodsA case study including seven systematic reviews is presented with the objective of refuting radical philosophical scepticism towards the belief that glass-ionomer cements (GIC) are beneficial in tooth caries therapy. The case study illustrates how principles of logical and empirical coherence may be applied as evidence in support of specific beliefs in healthcare.ResultsThe results show that radical scepticism may epistemologically be refuted on the basis of logical and empirical coherence. For success, several systematic reviews covering interconnected beliefs are needed. In praxis, these systematic reviews would also need to be of high quality and its conclusions based on reviewed high quality trials.ConclusionsA refutation of radical philosophical scepticism to clinical evidence may be achieved, if and only if such evidence is based on the logical and empirical coherence of multiple systematic review results. Practical application also requires focus on the quality of the systematic reviews and reviewed trials.
Highlights
Epistemology is described as the branch of philosophy that concerns itself with questions regarding human knowledge [1]
Quine (1964) described physical objects as mere cultural posits [5], Correspondence: neem@global.co.za SYSTEM Initiative/Department of Community Dentistry, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, 7 York Rd., Parktown/ Johannesburg 2193, South Africa and cognitive psychology and neuroscience have presented evidence that sense experience, the ‘bedrock of empirical knowledge’, is actively edited by human perception [4]. Such ‘editing’ renders sense experience subjective to the particular observer [6]. All these examples [2,3,4,5,6] share the common concept that some form of bias determines subjective perception concerning real world events
In order to limit the influence of some forms of systematic errors in the field of healthcare, methodological interventions for clinical trials, such as randomisation, blinding and intention-to-treat analysis, are proposed [8] and have been shown to be effective [9,10]
Summary
A case study including seven systematic reviews is presented with the objective of refuting radical philosophical scepticism towards the belief that glass-ionomer cements (GIC) are beneficial in tooth caries therapy. The case study illustrates how principles of logical and empirical coherence may be applied as evidence in support of specific beliefs in healthcare
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