Deconstructing the evidence-based discourse in health sciences: truth, power and fascism

Authors: Holmes, Dave; Murray, Stuart J¹; Perron, Amélie²; Rail, Geneviève²

Source: International Journal of Evidence-based Healthcare, Volume 4, Number 3, September 2006 , pp. 180-186(7)

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Abstract:

Background

Drawing on the work of the late French philosophers Deleuze and Guattari, the objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the evidence-based movement in the health sciences is outrageously exclusionary and dangerously normative with regards to scientific knowledge. As such, we assert that the evidence-based movement in health sciences constitutes a good example of microfascism at play in the contemporary scientific arena. Objective

The philosophical work of Deleuze and Guattari proves to be useful in showing how health sciences are colonised (territorialised) by an all-encompassing scientific research paradigm - that of post-positivism - but also and foremost in showing the process by which a dominant ideology comes to exclude alternative forms of knowledge, therefore acting as a fascist structure. Conclusion

The Cochrane Group, among others, has created a hierarchy that has been endorsed by many academic institutions, and that serves to (re)produce the exclusion of certain forms of research. Because `regimes of truth' such as the evidence-based movement currently enjoy a privileged status, scholars have not only a scientific duty, but also an ethical obligation to deconstruct these regimes of power.

Keywords: critique; deconstruction; evidence-based; fascism; health sciences; power

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1479-6988.2006.00041.x

Affiliations: 1: Department of English, Ryerson University Toronto, Ontario, Canada 2: Faculty of Health Sciences, School of Nursing, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, and

Publication date: 2006-09-01