Ledley F D
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Cell Biology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas.
Clin Invest Med. 1992 Dec;15(6):513-7.
Is the quality of science aimed at understanding and treating disease inferior to more basic investigations of basic biology, or does the different quality of medical science reflect a distinct nature? This duality in the meaning of quality is central to any critique of the quality of medical science. The nature of medical science, which deals with the dysfunction of integrated genetic, epigenetic, environmental, or stochastic phenomenon, is distinct from that of basic science which seeks to describe discrete biological processes. In physical sciences it is generally accepted that there are practical boundaries between disciplines such as quantum physics, thermodynamics, and chemistry even though, in theory, such investigations are related. In meteorology, the development of chaos theory establishes that there are even theoretical limits to the ability to predict large scale processes from their essential, constituent processes. So too, the quality of medical science may be distinct from that of basic biology.
旨在理解和治疗疾病的科学质量是否低于对基础生物学的更基础研究，或者医学科学的不同质量是否反映了其独特的性质？质量含义中的这种二元性是对医学科学质量进行任何批判的核心。医学科学的性质涉及整合的遗传、表观遗传、环境或随机现象的功能障碍，这与旨在描述离散生物过程的基础科学不同。在物理科学中，人们普遍认为，量子物理、热力学和化学等学科之间存在实际界限，尽管从理论上讲，这些研究是相关的。在气象学中，混沌理论的发展表明，从本质的组成过程预测大规模过程的能力甚至存在理论上的限制。同样，医学科学的质量可能与基础生物学的质量不同。
