The fragile analytical base of science

The accumulation and assessment of data is critical to the way we think and behave around health care, but science is much more than just a grouping of probabilities based on empirical accumulations and aggregations of data.
Science like all of our communications is based on a shared language; a shared maths and a shared set of meanings to the words we use.
Empirical science is underpinned by a huge body of analytical knowledge.
Often this underlying and presumed knowledge base isn’t so shared. The reasons and examples for our shared confusion fill our world to bursting; some deliberate, some due to incompetence and some simple human error.
So despite all our elaborate and peer reviewed efforts to ensure drugs don’t make it on to the market that arent safe we still hear about drug companies coughing up millions in fines and recalling medications.
Health care is complex and as such a conservative approach seems to make a lot of sense. Is that new treatment, surgery or drug safe – have you researched the research into it? Have you grilled your medico about the studies related to it. Are there other options?
Manual therapies are often referred to as conservative therapies, because they’ve been long practiced and don’t pretend to be much more than just encouraging our musculoskeletal bodies to function normally.
Sometimes that’s enough to get the body back to doing what it evolved to do.