title: Certainty, probability and abduction: why we should look to C.S. Peirce rather than Gödel for a theory of clinical reasoning.
abstract: This paper argues that Gödel's proof does not provide the appropriate conceptual basis on which to counter the claims of evidence-based medicine. The nature of, and differences between, deductive, inductive and abductive inference are briefly surveyed. The work of the American logician C.S. Peirce is introduced as a possible framework for a theory of clinical reasoning which can ground the claims of both evidence-based medicine and its critics.
authors.affiliation: Community Medicine Residency Programme, University of Toronto, Canada.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Upshur
mesh_terms: D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine / Q000379:methods*; D008128:Logic; D015233:Models, Statistical; D010684:Philosophy