Abstract

Mounting evidence indicates that the practice patterns of physicians may be improved by an increased attention to social science. As such, the general features of the arguments in Sales and Schlaff’s article “Reforming Medical Education: A review and synthesis of five critiques of medical practice” in this issue of Social Science & Medicine are easy to endorse. It seems, however, that the applications of social science are needed more urgently in the structure of medical practice than they are in the activities of particular physicians. In what follows, I expand on this point through a discussion of two dogmas of empirical training in medicine: the dominance of physical sciences and the legitimacy of intuitive judgment.