Utility of Evidence-Based Medicine in the Medical Profession.

are problematic. Although empiricism (ie, the doctrine that all knowledge is derived from sense experience) is not the only path to knowledge, EBM and POEMs (ie, EBM’s most clinically relevant offshoot) apply knowledge and evidence that produces outcomes. If a medical outcome is not “sensed” in some way by our patients or recognized through laboratory evaluations, it should be questioned along with the practical value of the knowledge that produced it. Thus, given the goals of EBM, it seems antithetical to criticize its empiric basis.