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Prediction: Nonsense or Hope?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 August 2018

Cyril Höschl
Cyril Höschl*
Affiliation:
3rd School of Medicine, Charles University, Ruská 87, 10000 Praha 10, Czech Republic; and Prague Psychiatric Centre
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Abstract

Psychiatry and psychopharmacology are no longer aiming to make a decisive breakthrough at the end of the century. Rather than seeking explanations, research workers are looking for ‘predictions’. Three main types of prediction are emerging: a tautological, a heuristic, and an irrelevant one. Few predictions found in the recent literature can be marked as ‘logical’ ones. Nevertheless, predictions play two important roles: they generate new hypotheses that can be falsified in properly designed scientific experiments; they also may serve to falsify given hypotheses. The main recent findings on predictions in psychiatry are briefly summarised.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 163 , Issue S21: Prediction in Psychopharmacology , September 1993 , pp. 46 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

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