This event was sponsored by the NextGen Precision Health initiative, Arts and Science’s Science Society Program and the Department of Philosophy through the Benjamin fund for Philosophy of Science.
The NextGen Precision Health Discovery Series provides learning opportunities for UM System faculty and staff across disciplines, the statewide community and our other partners to learn about the scope of precision health research and identify potential collaborative opportunities. The series consists of monthly lectures geared toward a broad multidisciplinary audience so all can participate and appreciate the spectrum of precision health efforts.
Information about continuing education is available below.
For questions about this event or any others in the Discovery Series, please reach out to Veronica Lemme at lemmev@health.missouri.edu.
Simulating Medicine
Speaker: Jacob Stegenga, PhD, Professor of Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge
Date: Sept. 27, 2022, noon-1 p.m.
Description
This talk presented a developing program in meta-research, or research about research, in which we simulate data to test hypotheses about medical research and clinical practice. Simulated data has a number of advantages over real data: access to real data is often impossible, especially in clinical science; we do not have unfiltered access to the truth of hypotheses with real data, while simulations allow us to stipulate the truth; and real data does not permit counterfactual analyses, while simulations afford the exploration of many counterfactual scenarios. In one set of simulations we investigate features of trials, asking questions like: To what extent does publication bias exaggerate estimates of effectiveness? In another, particularly important for precision health, we model the patient-physician encounter and ask: How reliable are first-person inferences about drug effectiveness?
About the Speaker 
Jacob Stegenga is a Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. He has published widely on fundamental topics in reasoning and rationality and philosophical problems in medicine and biology. Prior to joining Cambridge he taught in the United States and Canada, and he received his PhD from the University of California San Diego. He is the author of Medical Nihilism and Care and Cure: An Introduction to Philosophy of Medicine, and he is currently writing a book on the sciences of sexual desire.
Continuing Professional Education Credit
Nurses
Up to 1.0 contact hour will be awarded to all participants who view the live sessions in their entirety and complete the evaluation form.
University of Missouri Sinclair School of Nursing is approved as a provider of nursing continuing professional development by the Midwest Multistate Division, an accredited approver by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation.
Midwest Multistate Division Provider Number MO1022-6
Physicians
The Office of Continuing Education, School of Medicine, University of Missouri is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
The Office of Continuing Education, School of Medicine, University of Missouri designates this live educational activity for a maximum of 1 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should only claim the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
Financial Relationship Disclosure: Current ACCME (Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education) and Midwest Multistate Division, ANCC (American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation) rules state that participants in CE activities should be made aware of any relevant affiliation or financial interest in the previous 24 months that may affect the planning of an educational activity or a speaker’s presentation(s). Each planning committee member and speaker has been requested to complete a conflict of interest statement for the NextGen Precision Health Discovery Series. No planning committee member or speaker has a relevant financial interest.