Incompatible assumptions common in biomedical research
Thursday, October 6, 2011 - 16:00
in Psychology & Sociology
Strong, incompatible views are common in biomedicine but are largely invisible to biomedical experts themselves, creating artificial barriers to effective modeling of complex biological phenomena. Researchers at the University of Chicago explored the diversity in views among scientists researching the process of cancer metastasis and found ubiquitous disagreement around assumptions in any model of the progression of cancer cells from their original location to other parts of the body. The researchers suggest that making often invisible assumptions explicit could significantly improve the modeling of biomedical processes.