Medical Nihilism. Is it a vestige of a bygone age in medicine beset with treatments like mercury and bloodletting? Or the proper conclusion of a line of argument about our current medical interventions citing problems with contemporary medical research? These problems include the complex pathophysiology of contemporary diseases, the malleability of medical research methods, the biased social nexus of medical research, and a small effect size crisis. Should we have low confidence on average in medical interventions today? And is this the kind of question that we can answer with a dose of data and philosophy?

Today’s consultation is with philosopher Jacob Stegenga, Reader in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge.

You can read the article that Stegenga wrote to accompany this episode, “Gentle medicine could radically transform medical practice”, in Aeon.