"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." Isaac Newton, 1675 Modern society owes much to the Enlightenment and its corollary, the scientific method. Utilizing various parts or forms of deductive and inductive reasoning, the scientific method was developed and improved by many great minds, among them Aristotle, Ibn al-Haytham, Al-Biruni, Al-Rahwi, Roger and Francis Bacon, Renee Descartes, Galileo, Francesco Redi and Isaac Newton, often building upon the work of predecessors.
In medicine, we often transition from inductive and deductive reasoning to abductive reasoning, hopefully corrected by Bayesian inference. We can learn not only from the results of good research but also by studying good study design. This is a series about published studies that have left their mark.