Correlating facts or interpreting meaning: Two different epistemological projects within medical research

Abstract

Two different epistemological projects within medical research are presented and compared in this article. One project is the statistical approach that has long occupied a dominant position in medical science. The other project deals with the interpretation of meaning. The authors contend that these projects are different, but not contradictory. The importance of respecting the peculiarities of each is stressed. Several aspects of the projects are compared, including the character of the research object, the knowledge interests, and the use of empirical data. It is argued, among other things, that the phenomenological interpretation of meaning is epistemologically prior to the statistical correlation of facts. The article ends with a discussion of validation procedures based on the idea that all research is conducted starting from a certain perspective.

• Meaning interpretation
• phenomenology
• empirical
• phenomenology
• hermeneutics
• epistemology

Notes

1. We want to make the reader aware that the notion of facts, as we discuss it in connection with medical science, necessarily implies the observing of facts. The term facts can be used in scientific contexts other than in connection with observation. Ricoeur (1981) [3] has, in a very interesting article, discussed the subject matter of “proof” in Freud's psychoanalysis, where an important link lies in characterizing what may constitute a “fact” in psychoanalysis. Fact, in such a context, has nothing to do with “observational facts”

2. It is these creative moments in the fact-correlating research process that can easily turn speculative. The researcher often commits what William James [13] has called “the psychologist's fallacy”, which means that the researcher confuses his or her often abstract perspective of the situation with the subjects’ experiences of the situation

3. Other than these two epistemological projects, Habermas [14] speaks of a third knowledge interest in terms of emancipation. This kind of knowledge interest aims at revealing oppressing conditions both on a social level (for instance with the help of Marxist theory) and on an individual level (for instance with the help of psychoanalysis/psychoanalytic theory)

4. A brief comment should be made regarding a common and justified question of why the interpretive process in the EPP method does not include a calculation of reliability coefficients. It is our opinion that this viewpoint should be discussed further. However, it is only our intention here to mention certain circumstances that we believe may complicate, or possibly even preclude, a calculation of such a coefficient: (i) Interpretation of meaning is a holistic project, and one cannot atomize units that are interpreted independently of each other. (ii) The interpretive procedure differs from the proof procedure. It is our belief that the spirit characterizing the interpretive process calls for a consideration of the interpretation of meaning as an infinite project. Understanding can always be deepened, which is why a consensus does not put an end to the possibility of further deepening our understanding of the phenomenon being studied