• Daniel Auker-Howlett and Michael Wilde.
• Department of Philosophy, School of European Culture and Languages, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK.
• J Eval Clin Pract. 2020 Apr 1; 26 (2): 458464458-464.

AbstractSome philosophers have argued that evidence of underlying mechanisms does not provide evidence for the effectiveness of a medical intervention. One such argument appeals to the unreliability of mechanistic reasoning. However, mechanistic reasoning is not the only way that evidence of mechanisms might provide evidence of effectiveness. A more reliable type of reasoning may be distinguished by appealing to recent work on evidential pluralism in the epistemology of medicine. A case study from virology provides an example of this so-called reinforced reasoning in medicine. It is argued that in this case study, the available evidence of underlying mechanisms did in fact play a role in providing evidence in favour of a medical intervention. This paper therefore adds a novel and recent case study to the literature in support of evidential pluralism in medicine.© 2019 The Authors. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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