Why Medicine is not Science! Essay

Here's why medicine/nursing is a social (soft) "science" and not a real (hard) science. That's because factors are not strictly controlled (often barely controlled) and measurements aren't reported as they exactly are, just like many other social sciences. Also, social sciences are based on standalone findings from empirical data only and do not have underlying fundamental theories to adhere to and ultimately be traced back to. In other words, social sciences have too low of a standard. As a result, social sciences usually only use ad-hoc explanations, which make them prone to tweaking of parameters to change the conclusion. As expected, social sciences have a replication crisis, in which findings are not always repeatable. The most notorious example is psychology.

For example, using social science standards, the Earth can be concluded as flat or round, depending on the set of standalone ad-hoc explanations used. In true (hard) science though, the Earth can only be spatially round because there is only one interlinked set of explanations to be used.

Similarly, a social scientist (medical/clinical/nursing/nutritional scientist/zoologist/ecologist/archaeologIist) may say water freezes at 0°C. Notice how the parameters are poorly defined. It may not be repeatable at high altitudes, etc. However, a hard scientist (physicist/chemist/geologist/biologist) or engineer (which is practical application of hard science by definition) would say pure water of the standard isotopic composition under 1 atmosphere of pressure freezes at 0°C. Notice how all factors are strictly defined except for the one to be tested, which is temperature in this case.

In another case, the medical/clinical/nursing field says that the "normal" human body temperature is 37°C (98.6°F). This conclusion is oversimplified. However, using the same original set of data, the biological field would conclude that the mean core body temperature of a 19th-century male (presumably around ages 30-40) of European descent is 36.88°C with an uncertainty (it is not given, so I'm guesstimating here) of ±0.15°C, and that a drastically larger sample size with people from both genders from all different races will be needed to find the true mean of that time period to within an uncertainty of ±0.03°C (for example). As far as I know, no conclusive study has been done to date to determine the true average of the human core body temperature. The 37°C (98.6°F) figure is indeed outdated and somewhat inaccurate to begin with.

In yet another case, it has always been known that samples of urine contain measureable but insignificant amounts of bacteria. As a result, the medical field has traditionally said that urine from a normal person is "sterile". They always assumed that the insignificant amount is due solely to contamination as the urine passes through the bacteria-filled air between the urethra and the cup. However, the biological field would say that samples of urine from a healthy person contain statistically insignificant amounts of bacteria, and that a better methodology would need to be used to determine if urine is truly sterile or not. That was finally put to bed in late 2012 when someone did a simple experiment with an improved methodology in which sterile tubes were inserted into the urinary tract. They connected the urinary tract directly to a sterile external container under a sealed system. The sample was then tested for the presence of bacteria. Urine was indeed finally confirmed as not sterile. It is unclear whether medical schools still teach urine as sterile or not.

Vaccination, which is part of medicine, is a soft "science" and not a true science. Pfizer and BioNTech report that their COVID-19 vaccine is 95% effective for people ages 16 and above in clinical trials. However, many conditions in clinical trials are not controlled. For example, the temperatures, pressures, humidity, air quality, etc. in the room where the vaccines were administered is not known. Also, how the people were selected and their background is not known. As a result, this negatively impacts the repeatability of the results. In real-world practice, the vaccine is often only around 70% effective, sometimes as low as 42%, which is a huge discrepancy.

If a biologist were to do the clinical trials, most likely an insufficient amount of people would be willing to attend because of all the hassles required to make as many conditions controlled as possible, or else, in would be cost-prohibitive to pay all those participants huge amounts of money to persuade them to participate. If a biologist had access to records of the clinical trials done by medical professionals, he/she would say that the results are inconclusive because too many factors are uncontrolled, making it impossible to predict what the actual percentage effectiveness is in typically-encountered real-world conditions.

Here, I'm not implying that medicine is bad, doomed, and forever a soft "science". It is indeed theoretically possible (the likeliness is unknown) that medicine becomes a hard science. It is just that medicine is currently an unreliable soft science, will remain so for the forseeable future, and needs to drastically improve its methodology in order to become a reliable hard science.

Speaking of reliability, the reason why Japanese products are so reliable and durable is because their creators extensively employ hard science in their research and development, known as the Kaizen method. Products from other countries, such as Germany, may still be reliable, but only under a set of narrowly-defined conditions by the manufacturer (almost certainly to inflate the reliability claims while still technically being honest), which are not necessarily representative of the real world. As a result, they are not reliable and frequently break down in practice in the hugely-varying conditions of the real world. German cars are not unreliable per se. Rather, they are intolerant to adverse conditions. On the other hand, Japanese manufacturers, especially Toyota, Honda, Panasonic, and formerly Nissan before being bought out by Renault from France in 1999, design products to be reliable under varying extreme but controlled conditions that mimic the worst of all imaginable conditions encountered in the real world that are not considered abuse (in the immediate/individual-event sense) or neglect.

This is why I'm so confident Japanese cars like Toyotas and Hondas are guaranteed to last 700,000 miles (1,126,541km) and will almost certainly last 1,000,000 miles (1,609,344km) no matter what the operating conditions, given that fluid changes are never skipped and that the vehicle never encounters conditions immediately considered abuse or neglect. I wouldn't be surprised if they last 10,000,000 miles (16,093,440km) under those conditions. That is because a statistically significant amount of Toyotas and Hondas have reached the former mileage, with a few reaching the latter, on the original engine and transmission without needing repairs to nonconsumable components of those parts, combined with their hard scientific R&D methodology. This is also why I'm so confident Japanese appliances such as Panasonic are guaranteed to last 20 years and will almost certainly last 30 years under those same conditions. It wouldn't be surprising if they last 300 years under those same conditions.
https://youtu.be/32pzXMkCZ2c
https://www.motortrend.com/features/million-mile-tundra-the-tear-down/