| What is a clinical
epistemologist?
Epistemology is, literally, the theory of knowledge
(episteme + logos = knowledge + theory). But, that
branch of
philosophy generally deals with these issues in more abstract settings.
I work with the theory of knowledge with respect to a limited
field--the design and analysis of experiments contributing to the
development of treatment and detection technologies in oncology.
I help clinical and laboratory investigators determine what
they can learn from a given experiment, potential or realized, and what
they need to know to get from one experiment to the next.
I've
also
referred to this as "applications epistemology," but I thought
"clinical epistemology" sounded more appropriate in the context of
biomedical research. "Biostatistician" sounds like somebody
who
plots a
lot of Kaplan-Meier curves. I don't do that so much, if I can
help it.
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