“Anecdotal Evidence”: Why Narratives Matter to Medical Practice

Whether we choose to admit it or not, the anecdote continues to be an important engine of novel ideas in medicine. The anecdote is rife with such diffi culties as openness to interpretation, and the biases of faulty memory and foolish optimism; it is just as likely to be explained by fi ckle chance as by anything truly under the clinician’s control. It is colored by the infl ections to superstition and our willingness to be intrigued by mystery provoke such an angry, unrelenting diligence? An anecdote, after all, is just a story. The irony in our growing intolerance of the anecdote is that storytelling is full of lessons in imagination and invention so benefi cial to the creative investigator.