Abstract
BackgroundPublic health recommendations are usually based on a mixture of empirical evidence and normative arguments: to argue that authorities ought to implement an intervention that has proven effective in improving people’s health requires a normative position confirming that the authorities are responsible for improving people’s health. While public health (at the national level) is based on a widely accepted normative starting point – namely, that it is the responsibility of the state to improve people’s health – there is no widely accepted normative starting point for international health or global health. As global health recommendations may vary depending on the normative starting point one uses, global health research requires a better dialogue between researchers who are trained in empirical disciplines and researchers who are trained in normative disciplines.DiscussionGlobal health researchers with a background in empirical disciplines seem reluctant to clarify the normative starting point they use, perhaps because normative statements cannot be derived directly from empirical evidence, or because there is a wide gap between present policies and the normative starting point they personally support. Global health researchers with a background in normative disciplines usually do not present their work in ways that help their colleagues with a background in empirical disciplines to distinguish between what is merely personal opinion and professional opinion based on rigorous normative research.If global health researchers with a background in empirical disciplines clarified their normative starting point, their recommendations would become more useful for their colleagues with a background in normative disciplines. If global health researchers who focus on normative issues used adapted qualitative research guidelines to present their results, their findings would be more useful for their colleagues with a background in empirical disciplines.SummaryAlthough a single common paradigm for all scientific disciplines that contribute to global health research may not be possible or desirable, global health researchers with a background in empirical disciplines and global health researchers with a background in normative disciplines could present their ‘truths’ in ways that would improve dialogue. This paper calls for an exchange of views between global health researchers and editors of medical journals.
Highlights
Public health recommendations are usually based on a mixture of empirical evidence and normative arguments: to argue that authorities ought to implement an intervention that has proven effective in improving people’s health requires a normative position confirming that the authorities are responsible for improving people’s health
Summary: a single common paradigm for all scientific disciplines that contribute to global health research may not be possible or desirable, global health researchers with a background in empirical disciplines and global health researchers with a background in normative disciplines could present their ‘truths’ in ways that would improve dialogue
Dialogue Several contemporary global health debates require a dialogue between global health researchers who are trained in empirical disciplines and global health researchers who are trained in normative disciplines
Summary
What would it take to improve the dialogue between global health researchers who are trained in empirical disciplines and global health researchers who are trained in normative disciplines? In the background section, I argued that there are two sides to the problem: Global health researchers with a background in empirical disciplines seem reluctant to clarify the normative starting point they use; Global health researchers with a background in normative disciplines usually present their work in ways that do not help their colleagues with a background in empirical disciplines to distinguish between merely personal opinion and the results of rigorous research. Some of them will argue that if the interdisciplinary nature of global health were well understood and respected by all global health researchers – allowing researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds to work within their own paradigm [35] – they would not have to adapt to the expectations of their colleagues with a background in empirical disciplines The latter should accept that if a paper is published as a research paper in a peerreviewed legal or philosophical journal, it is the result of rigorous research, not merely personal opinion (or whim). Competing interests The author declares that he/she has no competing interests
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