ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to challenge the acceptance of Randomized controlled clinical trials (RCT)-style science as a gold standard to begin with. It does so in a way that can benefit all branches of health services research (HSR). Indeed, Mark Sullivan predicts that the "epidemiological transition" to chronic care will foster a sea-change in HSR through an "epistemological transition" that will result in the radical realignment between the objective and subjective elements of clinical medical science. The focus here on RCTs and the scientific method should not be taken to imply that other approaches to health care concerns were completely quashed by science in the later 1900s. Thomas Kuhn recognized that scientific paradigms shift when enough evidence mounts that cannot be explained by or contradicts the old paradigm, and that there is a march of science, but his ideas caused consternation in some circles when he first published them.
