Social

For my friends in the medical field, you may think the theory of Soros sounds great but has very little practical value.

On that, you are wrong.

It is a romantic idea that medical science falls within the category of natural science. But no. In terms of research and how we advance our knowledge, clinical medicine is by and large a social science - and, as the great hedge fund manager pointed out, people's opinion frequently affect the objective fact.

"How could that be ? We have objective means and elaborated statistical methods to test whether a new treatment or diagnostic test is useful." You may argue.

But no. One notable problem is we are not free to design any clinical trial. For example, if there is a moderately effective treatment for a certain disease, any new treatment should be compared to this supposedly gold standard rather than placebo (otherwise it would not be ethical to the participants). In fact, if the existing treatment is very effective, it is more common to test the additional benefit of a new treatment - on top of the existing one. We would never know the value of that new drug on its own.

Alas, do you now see the point ? Yes, it is in fact easy to tell whether a subject belongs to natural or social science: If a research project needs approval by an ethics committee, the topic falls into the latter category.

PS. I shall not elaborate on the more serious problem that, when the majority of the experts within the field holds a particular opinion, the result of any new research would be interpreted (or publicized) in favor of that opinion - irrespective to what the data actually show.

That's another (sobering) story.