{"id":47531,"date":"2020-05-15T15:19:28","date_gmt":"2020-05-15T14:19:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=47531"},"modified":"2020-05-25T18:02:04","modified_gmt":"2020-05-25T17:02:04","slug":"jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-testing-hypotheses-in-testing-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2020\/05\/15\/jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-testing-hypotheses-in-testing-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . testing hypotheses in testing times"},"content":{"rendered":"

All hypotheses are unequal; some are more unequal than others.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have <\/span>previously<\/span><\/a> discussed the Indo-European root <\/span>DHE<\/span>. The basic root, the so-called e-grade form, <\/span>DHE, <\/span>means to set or put down, to make or shape. But vowels change readily, by the mechanism that <\/span>Jakob Grimm<\/span><\/a> called ablaut (literally an off-sound). So there is also an o-grade form, <\/span>DHO, and a <\/span>zero-grade form, <\/span>DH\u018f<\/span>, in which the final vowel is a neutral vowel sound called a schwa, after the Hebrew vowel of that name. The schwa, represented by an inverted e (lower-case \u0259 or upper-case <\/span>\u018f<\/span>) typically occurs in weakly stressed syllables, like the <\/span>e<\/span><\/i> in \u201chypothesis\u201d (\/h\u028c\u026a\u02c8p\u0252\u03b8\u0259s\u1d7bs\/). These various forms can also have prefixes and suffixes and may be reduplicated. This gives rise to a myriad of words, examples of which follow.<\/span><\/p>\n

DHE <\/span>gives deed, misdeed, and the obsolete alms-deed; as Queen Margaret says of Richard Duke of York in Henry VI, \u201cMurder is thy alms-deed\u2014Petitioners for blood thou ne\u2019er putt\u2019st back\u201d. <\/span>DHO<\/span> gives us do, doing, and done. <\/span>DHEM <\/span>gives deem and theme, and <\/span>DHOM <\/span>gives doom and words ending -dom, like leechdom. Abdomen is conjecturally from the Latin abdere (ab + dare), to put away or conceal. <\/span>DHEK <\/span>gives theca (Greek<\/span> \u03b8\u03ae\u03ba\u03b7), a sheath that encloses an organ, and apothecary, from the Greek \u1f00\u03c0\u03bf\u03c4\u03b9\u03b8\u03ad\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9 to put away and hence \u1f00\u03c0\u03bf\u03b8\u03ae\u03ba\u03b7 a storehouse. And reduplication,<\/span> DHE-DH\u018f, <\/span>gives the Greek verb \u03c4\u03b9\u03b8\u03ad\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9, to put or place, which yields the trilogy of dialectical materialism, thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTheory\u201d is thought to come from two Greek words meaning to see, \u03b8\u03b5\u1fb6\u03c3\u03b8\u03b1\u03b9 and \u03cc\u03c1\u03ac\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd. However, I venture to suggest that it may have come from \u03c4\u03b9\u03b8\u03ad\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9 + \u03cc\u03c1\u03ac\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd, to place in view.<\/span><\/p>\n

So a hypothesis, literally \u201cplaced underneath\u201d (\u1f51\u03c0\u03cc), is a foundation, and hence the basis of an argument or a supposition. When it first entered English in the late 16<\/span>th<\/span> century it meant a particular case of a general proposition, and later the proposition itself. In logic it meant a supposition or condition forming the antecedent of a proposition. When Sir Thomas Browne used the word in his <\/span>Pseudodoxia Epidemica<\/span><\/i> in 1646, he meant, invoking the definition in the <\/span>Oxford English Dictionary<\/span><\/i>, \u201cA provisional supposition from which to draw conclusions that shall be in accordance with known facts, and which serves as a starting-point for further investigation by which it may be proved or disproved and the true theory arrived at.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This definition, unrevised since 1899, needs some attention. Hypotheses are indeed typically based on known facts and serve as starting points for further investigation, but only as such. It is easy to formulate explanations of phenomena once they have been observed, but wrong to accept them as gospel without further testing. However, to assert, as the <\/span>OED<\/span><\/i>\u2019s definition does, that by such testing a hypothesis can thereby be proved is misleading. As Karl Popper taught us in <\/span>The Logic of Scientific Discovery<\/span><\/i> (1959), originally published in German in 1934 as <\/span>Logik der Forschung<\/span><\/i>, the proper way to test a scientific hypothesis is to try, not to prove it, but to disprove it, to falsify it, as Popper put it. Here is what he wrote:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA scientist constructs hypotheses, or systems of theories, and tests them against experience by observation and experiment.\u201d Denying the validity of induction, he suggests that \u201cinference to theories, from singular statements which are \u2018verified by experience\u2019 \u2026 is logically inadmissible.\u201d He then goes on:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But today Popper\u2019s principle is being abandoned. During the pandemic, researchers, presumably supported by the ethics committees that scrutinize their proposed studies, have decided that masked, randomized, placebo-controlled trials are not necessary in testing treatments for a serious infection, with few grounds for assuming that they will be efficacious, or, even if efficacious, that the balance of benefit and harm will be favourable.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Greek<\/span> \u1f51\u03c0\u03cc\u03b8\u03b5\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2 meant, among several things, a proposal or a proposed action, a suggestion or advice, an excuse or pretext, a practical problem or a supposition. Aristotle used it to mean the assumption of the existence of some scientific object. Today this meaning seems to be being espoused once more. Instead of testing their hypotheses, instead of trying to falsify them, researchers are trying to prove them. Next week I shall discuss how we should be grading therapeutic hypotheses and testing them in different ways.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jeffrey Aronson<\/strong>\u00a0is a clinical pharmacologist, working in the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine in Oxford\u2019s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences. He is also president emeritus of the British Pharmacological Society.<\/em><\/p>\n

Competing interests:<\/strong> none declared.<\/em><\/p>\n

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This week’s interesting integer: 274<\/b><\/p>\n

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