How should we enact the revision to the rare disease medicine evidence hierarchy that I proposed in my LSE dissertation? This podcast explains how. Loosely, there should be 4 review steps:

1. Confirm the Study is for a Rare Disease

3. Future Plans for or Record of a Test of the Intervention (N-of-1 or Adaptive Bayesian)

4. Registry-Enabled Confirmatory Phase

What should count as reliable evidence supporting medical inductions when traditional evidentiary hierarchies are epistemically inadequate? This dissertation argues that the evidentiary status of mechanisms, broadly understood as reasoning based on understanding of causal biomedical systems, in rare disease medical research should be raised. This is an epistemological claim about evidence hierarchies in medicine, and its defense will be grounded in philosophy of science analysis (specifically via theories of classification in philosophy of medicine, the Cartwrightian account of causation, and the nature of scientific induction) of case studies. Current evidence-based medicine hierarchies prioritize evidence generation that propounds biostatistical inductions based on historical naturalist reference class foundations. Generating biostatistical inductions is not an epistemically adequate method of evidence generation for rare disease because of epistemic limitations surrounding the ability to generate and the realistic epistemic power of developing a statistical induction in rare disease. The refinement of reliable research methodology and accurate inductions (epistemological progress) and therapeutic breakthroughs (pragmatic progress) in rare disease medicine depend on the contribution of mechanistic reasoning to evidence-based decisions rather than on statistically-enabled evidence generation.

In this episode, it is held that love isn’t real, or at the very most, it could exist, but we will never know for sure if we have experienced it or not. With romantic love, we continually lack certainty. Three conditions for the satisfaction of romantic love are put forth, with 2 being targeted with objections as part of the argument. So what if romantic love doesn’t exist? There are a lot of other outstanding aims in life.