Chapter 1: A Critical Social Science of Evidence-Based Healthcare

Abstract

In many respects evidence-based healthcare is neither new nor are its philosophical underpinnings unique. Getting the best knowledge to the right people in a timely fashion is commonsense. Yet, this basic principle reflects a broader social movement in knowledge production and dissemination that has been emerging for centuries. Scientific inquiry, as it were, has become more systematic, globally connected and protocol driven over the course of the twentieth century. While scientific discoveries in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries still often occurred in the context of a sole or renegade researcher/practitioner, the latter part of the twentieth century witnessed the global streamlining, enhanced connectivity and dramatic institutionalisation of scientific knowledge production.