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In an address to the British Neonatal Society, in 1993,1 Ola Saugstad spoke about the future of neonatal research; and he referred to Karl Popper's views concerning the limitations of inductive reasoning when trying to prove cause and effect in medicine. Saugstad's words remind me how hard it has been to give up the conventional notion about the nature of scientific proof. Even at this late date many in our profession still believe that a statement is scientific, if it can be verified by objective observation, and that the truth of statements about natural events can be proven by repeated verifications.
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William A. Silverman (1994) studied this question.
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