Comprehensive summary of the first 6 lectures (look at mu other uploads if you want all the exam material) including all the images. I got graded a 8,9 for the exam! :)
HC 1&2: Introduction, history of biomedical sciences and interdisciplinarity in
biomedical sciences (06/09/22)
-Disclaimers today:
• WE NEED DISCIPLINARY RESEARCH -> Without disciplinary work, no interdisciplinary work.
• WESTERN BASED HISOTRY -> Many developments outside the Europe/America before and after
-Two main Learning goals of the course:
• Understand the interdisciplinary nature of biomedical sciences
• To apply interdisciplinary biomedical knowledge to address health issues in society.
-All learning goals:
• To understand the essentials of the immunology and neurobiology of infectious diseases
• To understand infectious disease progression and diagnostics
• To select and interpret research methods and techniques commonly applied in the fields of
immunology, neurobiology, infectious diseases, and science and society studies
• To understand and interpret epidemiology of infectious disease outbreaks
• The essentials of statistics used in biomedical sciences
• To understand data collection tools that support outbreak investigations
• To understand outbreak policies and intervention options as well as their limitations
• To develop evidence-informed advice to address an infectious disease outbreak in society
• To communicate and present evidence-informed advice to experts, peers, and society
• To work together with fellow students in groups
-It is important to integrate different biomedical
disciplines!
-Definition of biomedical sciences -> Biomedicine is
a branch of medical science that applies biological and
physiological principles to clinical practice.
• Although there is no universally agreed upon
definition of ‘biomedicine,’ it is often
conceptualized as the search for
therapeutic/medical innovations in the
laboratory.
History
-We nowadays mostly use statistics to show/prove our results. Back in the days this was different ->
Explanation via observations etc.
• So, these are non-biological explanations, examples: (not really important)
o Divine (goddelijk), like human sin and jews -> Penance (boetedoening), persecution
(vervolging)
o Conjunction Jupiter, Mars, Saturn -> Supersticion (bijgeloof)
o Bad air (Mal-aria), rotting with herbs, quarantaine -> Clearing the air
o Balance of the body -> exercise, diets, “cures”
• Quarantine -> The one prevention discovered back in the days that we are still using.
-Scientific revolution started 17th century -> “The body works as a machine”.
• Boerhave -> hydraulic system and fluids
• Harvey -> heart is a pump
• We still use this statement nowadays.
-Corvisart (and laënnec) -> Researcher that worked with instruments (‘invented’ medical technology).
• He introduced percussion (early 19th century)
• In the late 19th century -> resistance
-early 19th century -> Start of the laboratory.
• Started at his house -> Von Liebig laboratory – Giessen
, • Virchow -> Cellular pathology
• Ernst Abbe -> Microscope improvement
• Pasteur -> micro-organisms, pasteurization and rabies vaccine
• Koch -> Koch postulates, cholera and discovered TBC (tuberculose).
• Fleming -> Discovered antibiotic Penicillin (1928).
-Biomedical Research became the dominant research field of treating diseases! -> Biomedical paradigm /
biomedicalization
• Basic and clinical research are linked -> “the production of knowledge about therapeutics always
requires a clinical phase” (Lowy, 1996)
-Best available evidence in clinic, biomedicine as practice -> evidence based medicine
• Diagnosis and etiology -> Blood, genes etc
• Clinical trials -> This is coming from RCT (randomized controlled trials)
o The single most important event in integrating hospitals and patients into the biomedical
enterprise was the development of the randomized clinical trial (RCT).
o Also has become a problem -> Because the paradigm also influences a lot of other fields.
▪ Other fields now also have to undergo RCTs, RCT are more meant for biomedical
actions in research.
• Risk and enhancement -> Hormone replacement therapy, started off as therapy for severe
symptoms of menopause (which itself can hardly be characterized as a ‘disease’), to become a
preferred treatment to keep the skin of postmenopausal women supple.
o Another thing we see with biomedicalization.
o We move beyond the realm of disease -> I don’t know if that is a wrong thing, but good to
mention.
-Reductionism -> A metaphor that can show that we can break down parts of the body and that we then
can research these parts apart from each other (-).
• Definitions of different disciplines:
o An ontological claim that a whole organism is ‘nothing more’ than the sum of its parts.
o An epistemological claim that the organism is best explained by reference to its parts.
o A methodological claim that the organism is best investigated by its parts.
• We try to isolate things we want to study -> Not in line with the start at the evolution, where we
see the body as a whole system.
• We more and more realize now how everything is connected!
-For a lot of the solutions that are made up, don’t work in the practice, because the body is a changing
‘thing’.
• Piecemental piece of evidence is therefore not always good in real life.
What is interdisciplinarity?
-Biomedical sciences aims to improve quality of life through medical innovation → Therefore, requires
active collaboration to ensure pieces of knowledge are together, and it fits the needs and it can be
implemented.
-On its onset interdisciplinarity:
• Biology and chemistry -> organic molecules and reactions (mid 19th century)
• Biology and mathematics -> spread of infections (early 20th century)
• Biology and engineering -> medical devices (mid 20st century)
Disciplinarity
-So, this lecture is about the interdisciplinary side of biomedical sciences. You must work together and
have knowledge of different disciplines. BUT, we also need disciplinary research!!
-Disciplines started when we knew more and more and more, so that it almost became too difficult to still
be interdisciplined.
• We used to be interdisciplined, because we knew less, so it was easier to know more of different
specializations.
-Disciplines at universities:
, • Middle ages -> Cathedral schools for the clergy (Italy)
• 11th-12th c. -> Universities in Bologna, Paris, Oxford
• Modernity -> Expansion of physics and mathematics
• Late 19th c. -> Professionalizing, institutionalizing, specializing
• Early 20th c. -> Rise of the social sciences, health sciences
• Result -> Sciences is organized in disciplines
-How does a discipline work? Scientific discipline has:
• Ontology -> The art of being: the ‘properties’ of things; what are objects anyway? (Wanneer is iets
iets?)
• Epistemology -> The art of knowing: the way in which we are able to know; how do we perceive
reality? (methodology)
o Also means -> What kind of methods can I use
• Conceptology -> The art of understanding: the meaning of definitions; which words/language do
we use?
o The art of understanding meaning the definition we give to things.
-Research design:
• Epistemology
o Positivism/objectivism -> you understand objectivism/positivism -> You think that we can
develop an objective view of the world.
▪ Related to the scientific revolution.
▪ More related to quantitative studies
o Constructivism
▪ Only thing that we can do is to perceive the world as it conceives to us.
• We construct the truth -> Maakt niet uit of daar ergens een andere
waarheid/observatie is.
▪ More dominant perspective in … studies (with interviews).
o (participatory)
• → Methodology
• → Methods
-Disciplinary cultures -> The complex total of knowledge, beliefs, values, habits, practices that determine
how groups interpreted the world.
• Lature -> Observed the laboratory -> how people behave in laboratory.
o They are not only objective, but also listen to rules who must be followed.
▪ So, the complex total of different variants can result in another truth.
• Influences:
, o What knowledge is relevant?
o What questions should be addressed?
o What methodologies should be applied?
o How to interpret results?
• Schein 1980 -> Discipline is an organisational culture.
o “'a pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of
external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered
valid and therefore to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think and
feel in relation to those problems”.
Interdisciplinarity
-Why interdisciplinarity? -> We otherwise can miss the entirety.
-Interdisciplinarity is more than only working together!
• Collaboration between scientific disciplines:
o Among beta disciplines
o Beta with gamma and alpha disciplines.
• Identify research questions together
• Look at each other’s methods
• Analyse the findings together
• This all for good integration.
-So, the real meaning of interdisciplinarity -> A process of answering a question, solving a problem, or
addressing a topic that is too broad or complex to be dealt with adequately by a single discipline or
profession…
…and draws on disciplinary perspectives and integrates their insights through construction of a
more comprehensive perspective.”
-Multidisciplinarity -> More specializations/disciplines study the same problem, but work apart.
• It doesn’t mean that you work on the same research question! So, less collaboratory then
interdisciplinarity.
-So, why interdisciplinarity?
• Source of inspiration -> broadening of horizons etc.
o New combinations lead to innovation.
▪ One reason to have this goal is because society domains it!
• Address interesting complex scientific questions or topics that you cannot answer from a
monodiscipline, e.g.
• Improves research quality -> enriches
• Research funding.
-Complex adaptive systems -> HOLISM? (Should
not be seen as parts, but as a whole).
• It is very tricky to study things in isolation
(keeping everything stable and measure
one parameter).
-Epidemiological triangle -> Important model in
infectious disease.
-Two ways of looking of knowledge of the world:
• We are on the left, but we have to know
more about alpha and gamma.
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