Historiography taking issue: analyzing an experiment with heroin abusers

Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
Trudy Dehue

Abstract

This article discusses the predicament of historians becoming part of the history they are investigating and illustrates the issue in a particular case. The case is that of the randomized controlled trial (RCT)-more specifically, its use for testing the effects of providing heroin to severe heroin abusers. I counter the established view of the RCT as a matter of timeless logic and argue that this research design was developed in the context of administrative knowledge making under twentieth-century economic liberalism of which it epitomizes some central values. I also argue that the applicability of the RCT depends on the degree to which its advocates can define the issue to be studied according to its inherent values. Next, I demonstrate how advocates of an RCT with heroin provision in the Netherlands steered the political discussion on heroin provision and how the values of economic liberalism also shaped the results of the Dutch maintenance experiment. In addition, I relate how my analysis of this experiment became part of political debates in the Netherlands. Contrary to my intentions, adversaries of heroin maintenance used my critique on the heroin RCT as an argument against heroin maintenance. Such risks are inherent to h...Continue Reading

References

Nov 1, 1991·American Journal of Public Health·W Anderson
Oct 22, 1998·Bulletin of the History of Medicine·T J Kaptchuk
Oct 31, 2000·Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences·K Danziger
Jan 6, 2001·Isis; an International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences·D S Jones
May 30, 2001·Journal of Clinical Epidemiology·T J Kaptchuk
Apr 30, 2003·Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences·Robert A Nye
Aug 9, 2003·BMJ : British Medical Journal·Wim van den BrinkJan M van Ree

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