School of Human Communication Sciences, La Trobe University, The Royal Children’s Hospital, Murdoch Childrens ResearchInstitute, Melbourne, AustraliaThe five commentaries written in response to mylead article raise some interesting and importantissues. Inherent in each commentary are not onlyfurther challenges for the profession but also theidentification of some positive steps we can take.In identifying a number of additional barriers thatprevent speech pathologists becoming EB practi-tioners, Logemann touches on important issues thatare occasionally skirted around but rarely directlyaddressed. These include the current focus in healthcare on productivity for income (in both health andeducation). This seems to be at odds with EBP andraises some important questions. First, do ourfunding and service delivery models permit EBP inSpeech Pathology? Second, how do we define anevidence based speech pathologist? Certainly, cur-rent funding models do not take account of the factthat good, evidence-based clinical care requires morethan a throughput of patients. Yet the time requiredto develop expert clinical skills, acquire new knowl-edge and read and apply evidence is not included infunding models.In 2002 Greenhalgh wrote an interesting articleentitled ‘‘Intuition and evidence—uneasy bedfel-lows?’’ (Greenhalgh 2002). She discussed whatcould be the worst outcome from an EB approachto clinical care, ‘‘the ‘evidence-burdened’ approachof the inexperienced, protocol-driven clinician ...’’.She emphasized that intuition is a valid decisionmaking method that is usually inaccessible to thenovice clinician and that intuition is not unscientificbut a creative process that is ‘‘fundamental tohypothesis generation in science’’. Greenhalgh statesthat this is as important and should be applied with(not instead of) deductive EBP. This approach mayreassure Beecham who remains unconvinced aboutthe need for speech pathologists to become EBpractitioners. Whilst she agrees that ‘‘... we need tounderstand what we do in practice ...’’ she statesthat accepting EBP is not only difficult (a fact noneof the commentators dispute) but it is ‘‘downrightdangerous’’. The rationale for this is her contentionthat we speech pathologists don’t understand ‘‘whatour existing beliefs are’’, nor do we understand ‘‘howthese lead to us to what we do, in the way that we doit’’. Beecham compiles a list of ‘things’ we need tounderstand about our practice ‘‘in order to unques-tionably accept and integrate the premises of EBP’’.Does this perhaps suggest that in time she believeswe can become EB practitioners?Beecham makes an interesting point that there are‘‘... no ‘absolute’ norms of human communi-cation ... rather each client represents her ownnorm, based upon her subjective experience’’. I agreewith this premise; there are numerous characteristicsthat make each of us individually unique. Yet thisdoes not mean that we should only attend at the levelof the individual. For example, in order to learnmore about what constitutes efficient feeding inneonates we study the components of sucking inneonates. We have learned by systematically obser-ving sucking patterns in babies (both thosedeveloping typically and atypically) that every babyappears to have a unique and individual suckingpattern and rhythm. However, defining the norm(which typically involves a range rather than abso-lutes) will help develop screening programs to detectstruggling neonates who are failing to thrive andrequire early and urgent intervention. Furthermore,we all have our own unique walking patterns andcould therefore argue as Beecham does that there isno ‘‘absolute’’ norm. However, if we accepted thispremise then we would not have the amazing body ofresearch emerging from Gait Laboratories all overthe world, which has led to new and more effectivetreatments for children and adults with motor