Determination of Status and Efficacy of Complementary Medicinal Treatments: Do We Need an Alternativ Research Methodology?

Abstract: Before the time of Paracelsus, disputing in Latin language as an epistemological method for gaining knowledge had decayed to an attitude and thus had to be replaced. Today's 'Latin creed' is science creed, and inconsiderate collection of scientific facts is mistaken for scientific approach. The clinical epidemiologist Feinstein revives the call for a patient-adjusted science and faults that the 'clinical material' (i.e. the patient) cannot be characterized appropriately by an ill-balanced, pathologic-anatomically oriented nosology. Increasingly, innovatively thinking persons in the field of conventional medicine identify and describe dramatically appearing shortcomings of 'scientific' diagnostics and of the establishment of therapy objectives, whereas these shortcomings frequently are overlooked by complementary medicine researchers. We do not need a basically new research methodology for complementary medicine; rather it is important to take notice of the profound methodological developments in conventional medicine in recent years and to creatively get on with them.

Keyword(s): Konventionelle Medizin

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