Introduction into Etiognostic Clinical Research

Abstract

Having achieved rule-in diagnosis, an expert clinician’s next challenge may arise from the need to know about the causal origin – etiogenesis – of the patient’s illness, possible iatrogenesis in particular. Different from diagnosis, the doctor’s personal experience is not instructive about etiognostic probabilities; (s)he is totally depended on evidence from relevant research. But understanding the burden of that evidence from etiogenetic/etiognostic research is much more challenging than is its counterpart in respect to diagnostic research. In fact, it is so challenging that fundamental fallacies still characterize epidemiologists’ research on the etiogenesis of illness, even though etiogenesis has been the principal concern in their research for a good half-century already.