T. C. Chamberlin and ‘The method of method of multiple working hypotheses':
Its relevance to clinical medicine today, 100 years after publication
Stephen Davies
J.Nutr. & Env. Med. 1997; 4: 233-235
This paper celebrates the centenary of the publication of a milestone paper written by geologist T. C. Chamberlin and highlights how the intellectual process of the method of multiple working hypotheses is a more effective and less problematic way of arriving at the truth of a given situation. This approach has as much relevance today as it did a hundred years ago. It is proposed that the current pharmacodox paradigm might, in fact, be an example of the less intellectually developed ‘method of the ruling theory’.