title: Inference to the best explanation and mechanisms in medicine.
abstract: This article considers the prospects of inference to the best explanation (IBE) as a method of confirming causal claims vis-à-vis the medical evidence of mechanisms. I show that IBE is actually descriptive of how scientists reason when choosing among hypotheses, that it is amenable to the balance/weight distinction, a pivotal pair of concepts in the philosophy of evidence, and that it can do justice to interesting features of the interplay between mechanistic and population level assessments.
authors.affiliation: Philosophy Department, School of European Culture and Languages, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK. sd508@kent.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Dragulinescu
mesh_terms: D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine; D006801:Humans; D008511:Medicine; D010684:Philosophy; D012935:Social Justice
keywords: Causation; Confirmation; Evidence; Extrapolation; Inference to the best explanation; Mechanisms; Weight and balance