Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA.
Anthropol Med. 2021 Dec;28(4):429-444. doi: 10.1080/13648470.2021.1890943. Epub 2021 Jul 12.
Individual scientists, clinicians, and other experts cannot have absolute knowledge of all of the theories, methods, models, and findings in their field of practice. Rather, these individuals make choices about the kind of information that will be most meaningful and impactful in their work, while choosing - or being compelled to choose - what knowledge to overlook or ignore: a process identified as sufficient knowledge. In biomedicine, medical students are socialized to deliberately decide what information matters most; so, too, do practicing physicians openly acknowledge that they make choices around knowledge in daily practice. Within this process, time is a critical factor that mediates epistemological decision-making. In other words, how does time bound or restrict what forms and depth of medical knowledge that physicians and future physicians prioritize? When would someone intentionally limit time in order to constrain the amount and types of information he, she, or they acquire? To answer these questions, this study draws upon interviews and participant observation conducted with students at a medical school in the American Midwest. This article seeks to answer the aforementioned questions and to provide a new framework for, and expand discussions of, agnotology in the anthropology of medicine.
个体科学家、临床医生和其他专家不可能对其实践领域中的所有理论、方法、模型和发现拥有绝对的知识。相反，这些人会选择对他们的工作最有意义和最有影响力的信息，同时选择或被迫选择忽略或忽视哪些知识：这一过程被确定为充分知识。在生物医学中，医学生被社会化，以便有意决定最重要的信息；执业医生也公开承认，他们在日常实践中围绕知识做出选择。在这个过程中，时间是一个关键因素，它影响着认识论决策。换句话说，时间如何限制或限制医生和未来医生优先考虑的医学知识的形式和深度？什么时候有人会故意限制时间，以限制他、她或他们获得的信息量和类型？为了回答这些问题，本研究借鉴了在美国中西部一所医学院进行的访谈和参与式观察。本文旨在回答上述问题，并为医学人类学中的不可知论提供一个新的框架，并扩展其讨论。
