Over the last weeks I have heard the word ‘evidence’ in clinical contexts more often than I care to remember. I hated it every time, every time I felt it was meant to thwart whatever I said. And so it’s time for a linguist’s take on evidence-based medicine.Let me make one thing clear, though. I really don’t know much about EBM and what I do know comes from a few texts and the knowledge I now possess equips me for not much more than a dinner conversation on EBM. Still, I actually think I have something (maybe even useful) to say.

So, each time I heard the word ‘evidence’ in a clinical context was when the doctor (here, in England) was summing up my visit and said something like:

So, the evidence is that….

And he or she would continue with a brief summary which for the most part was his/her take on the blood test results. To be completely honest, every time I heard it, I wanted to say a sentence with three words, the first started with ‘f’ and ends with ‘k’ and has another two letter in-between, and the other two words are ‘your evidence’.  And then scream: “I don’t care, I fell very unwell.”  And this blog, really, is about why I would want to say it.

Well, the situation in the doctor’s surgery is something like that. I sit down, I am invited to tell the doctor what the problems is, I start talking that I have felt very unwell, that life is not worth living like this. Then (sometimes) I get the ICE questions and then the doctor says:

So, the evidence is….

and I start despairing. Because ‘the evidence’ never (like never ever) refers to what I said. The evidence always consists of the ‘objective evidence’, that is to say the bloods and what the doctor saw in my throat. The mention of evidence marks the moment when my whole narrative, which, to be honest, I am sick and tired of repeating, disappears. Somehow, how I feel is never part of ‘the evidence’ and I might as well have said nothing.

And here we come to what I think is a linguistic problem (whether it’s more important than the medical one might be a matter of perspective). First, it’s about the process of communication. What happens in the doctor’s surgery, has nothing to do with communication. In fact, we only pretend. The doctor asks me to talk because s/he already knows that I should be able to voice my concerns. But after I’m done, my story is cancelled. It’s like s/he never heard me, it becomes irrelevant in the face of the almighty, objective, powerful ‘evidence’. Yes, it’s another version of what I call ‘institutional muting’.

But what gets me going really is how it is done, the actual clause:

So, the evidence is…

Let’s take it apart, then. First, consider the ‘so’. It’s a conjunction. This suggests that it has some link to what has been said before. Yes, it opens a new sentence, but the new sentence is part of a larger ‘story’, larger language unit. In such a way the doctor suggests that his evidence is in one way or another linked to what has been said before. Nice trick, you could say, because it’s not. As I said, what has been said before, well, what has been said before by me, does not find its way into the ‘evidence’.

But now comes the real treat. The declarative clause in 3^rd person, no qualifications, the clause simply describes reality in a neutral and objective way. The doctor does not suggest that the ‘the evidence’ is part of his opinion. It’s not about what he thinks. No, the sentence suggests that what he talks about is the case.

Moreover, starting with ‘the evidence’ places it as the theme/topic of the sentence and therefore suggests we (the doctor and I) know what s/he talks about, it is already part of the ‘given’, he only clarifies what the ‘evidence’ is (here is a brief introduction to the information structure of clauses/sentences). There is no question, it seems, what might be the evidence, after all that it is evidence, to repeat, is positioned syntactically as a given. He offers a summary.

And, to be honest, this is what irritates me. I understand completely that medicine does not and cannot rely only on my story. I understand that the doctor has his/hers. But what irritates me is constructing it as the objective truth. No, the evidence is not….What is the case is in fact that you decide to focus on certain things and ignore some others. There is nothing objective about it, it is your judgement. And it might be a/the right judgement, but do not pretend it is more than that.

I’m afraid this is not the end, though. Such constructions undermine the trust between us. Because I start wondering whether you actually do understand that you are not talking about some objective truth, or whether you think I am stupid enough not to be able to understand an explanation of your judgement. As we pretend to communicate, we just waste energy dancing around what’s at stake – how I feel and what we can do about it. Moreover, this dancing for me means also that our relationship is unravelling, together with trust and respect.

But I want to finish with a digression. A few days ago I wrote about “the patients’ language”. I argued that there is no such thing. And this post should also be read as reinforcement of this message. Perhaps for some people a sentence about ‘the evidence’ works and reassures them. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work for me. I see the sleight of hand in it, the insincerity or thoughtlessness (take your pick). I need a different ‘language’. I need an accounting of my story and or yours, otherwise it makes no sense and there is no communication between us. This is because I am not ‘a patient’, the half-witted prototype in your head. No, I am me, and, perhaps surprisingly, I actually understand quite a lot.