Are the Differences Irreconcilable?
A fourth area in which health care and the law approach evidence differently is the way in which experts are used to adjudicate differences. In health care, evidence is generally accepted only after it has been published in a peer-reviewed journal. Thus the decision about whether research findings are worthy of publication is a key step in the creation of the evidentiary base for clinical practice. Submitted articles are sent out for review, sometimes in a blind fashion, and the reviewers have an opportunity to critique the article before it is published. However, once the article is published, only an occasional letter to the editor or other articles with different findings are likely to refute the evidence. In addition to reviewing manuscripts that have been submitted, journal editors have the opportunity to invite commentary by experts and to evaluate or invite syntheses and analyses of large fields of literature. Although these review articles, like original science articles, are r
