Les petits nombres de la clinique

This article focuses on the conditions for integrating quantitative reasoning into clinical research, based on French phthisiology in the 1940s and 1950s. It introduces the concept of small numbers to explain the value of quantification operations that are not backed by statistical epistemology, but...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Kylian Godde
Format: Article
Language:fra
Published: Société d'Anthropologie des Connaissances 2024-12-01
Series:Revue d'anthropologie des connaissances
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Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/rac/34920
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Summary:This article focuses on the conditions for integrating quantitative reasoning into clinical research, based on French phthisiology in the 1940s and 1950s. It introduces the concept of small numbers to explain the value of quantification operations that are not backed by statistical epistemology, but without referring them to proto-statistics that are flawed or poorly constructed. Drawing on the methods of the socio-history of quantification, the article highlights three modes of existence of numbers in the construction of knowledge in phthisiology: the measurement of biological processes, the arrangement in series of cases and the creation of equivalence classes. Their analysis makes it possible to characterize the way in which phthisiologists quantify as clinicians, and thus to equip medical judgment.
ISSN:1760-5393