TY - JOUR T1 - The scientific method(s) of primary care JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 553 LP - 553 VL - 54 IS - 504 AU - Chris Burton AU - Tom Love Y1 - 2004/07/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/54/504/553.abstract N2 - To ordinary GPs, sceptical of arm-waving complexity theorists and qualitative research which tells them what they knew all along, the critique of everything short of the RCT, by Kevork Hopayian,1 must seem like justification at last for their beliefs.Like Dr Hopayian, we live in the real world. We also have no doubt that for some research questions — such as whether a drug works for a specific condition — ‘the scientific method’ is the best tool for the task. But it stretches the point to argue from this premise that other methods of reaching knowledge are inherently inferior. Here, in the spirit of constructive debate, we outline some arguments in favour of diverse approaches.We don't share the view, developed by positivist philosophers in the early 20th century and extended by Karl Popper in his hypotheticodeductive method, of science as the step-by-step progress towards the … ER -