This project adopts a historically informed philosophy of science perspective to explore methods that address the challenge of matching experimental targets with real-world applications. It aims to characterize "scoping methods," which evaluate how well interventions align with disease classifications.
The project will analyze various methods, including pharmacoepidemiological research, computational assessments, network neuroscience, and reverse clinical trials. Reverse translation, where treatments tested in humans are retested in animal models, is a key focus.
The project's hypothesis is that scoping methods can help to provide insights into pathophysiological mechanisms and improve the matching of models to real-world targets, and that a better understanding of this class of methods will provide insights for planning and evaluating translational research. The findings may also influence research funding policies.
This project will be primarily hosted at the University of Bielefeld with Lara, and secondments are planned with Andrea Burden at ETH Zurich and Linda at the AUMC in Amsterdam.
You can find out more about Lara’s research here: Bielefeld History and Philosophy of Medicine Group: https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/fakultaeten/geschichtswissenschaft/abteilung/arbeitsbereiche/geschichte-medizin/personen/
Pravajya Pandey
My PhD project examines “scoping methods” in translational biomedical research – methods that evaluate how well experimental models and interventions match real-world diseases and patient-relevant outcomes. The central question I ask is how these methods can be conceptually and philosophically evaluated to improve research on complex and heterogeneous medical conditions. I was motivated to join TRANSCEND because it uniquely brings together philosophy and biomedical science to address these challenges in an interdisciplinary and patient-focused manner.
