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Public health reasoning: much more than deduction

The deductive paradigm has produced notable successes in epidemiology and public health. But while deductive logic has made a substantial contribution to the public health field, it must be recognized that there are also limits to that contribution. This report examines one such limit: the need for...

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Autor principal: Cummings, Louise
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4176304/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24047328
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/0778-7367-71-25
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author Cummings, Louise
author_facet Cummings, Louise
author_sort Cummings, Louise
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description The deductive paradigm has produced notable successes in epidemiology and public health. But while deductive logic has made a substantial contribution to the public health field, it must be recognized that there are also limits to that contribution. This report examines one such limit: the need for non-deductive models in public health reasoning. The findings of a study of public health reasoning in 879 members of the public are reported. Four non-deductive strategies were chosen for their capacity to bridge gaps in one’s knowledge. It emerged that subjects were adept at using these strategies in the absence of knowledge to arrive at judgements about public health problems. The implications of this finding for public health communication are discussed.
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spelling pubmed-41763042014-09-27 Public health reasoning: much more than deduction Cummings, Louise Arch Public Health Commentary The deductive paradigm has produced notable successes in epidemiology and public health. But while deductive logic has made a substantial contribution to the public health field, it must be recognized that there are also limits to that contribution. This report examines one such limit: the need for non-deductive models in public health reasoning. The findings of a study of public health reasoning in 879 members of the public are reported. Four non-deductive strategies were chosen for their capacity to bridge gaps in one’s knowledge. It emerged that subjects were adept at using these strategies in the absence of knowledge to arrive at judgements about public health problems. The implications of this finding for public health communication are discussed. BioMed Central 2013-09-18 /pmc/articles/PMC4176304/ /pubmed/24047328 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/0778-7367-71-25 Text en Copyright © 2013 Cummings; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Commentary
Cummings, Louise
Public health reasoning: much more than deduction
title Public health reasoning: much more than deduction
title_full Public health reasoning: much more than deduction
title_fullStr Public health reasoning: much more than deduction
title_full_unstemmed Public health reasoning: much more than deduction
title_short Public health reasoning: much more than deduction
title_sort public health reasoning: much more than deduction
topic Commentary
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4176304/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24047328
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/0778-7367-71-25
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