Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #103137

Hossein Bahrami, MD, MPH, Departments of Epidemiology and Ophthalmology, Johns Hopkins Schools of Public Health and Medicine, 1620 McElderry Street, #531, Baltimore, MD 21205, (410)502-6501, hbahrami@jhsph.edu

A rapid expansion in our understanding of glaucoma in the last two decades has raised many unanswered questions. While there is a general consensus that the old framework for our knowledge of glaucoma does not solve current problems, we have failed to provide a new comprehensive framework to substitute for the old one. Numerous studies have tested different alternative frameworks, but our hesitation to bring these pieces of evidence together has resulted in lack of an agreement on a new framework. In fact, we have achieved much more in understanding what we do not know than in recognizing what we do know. This presentation attempts to analyze the current situation in glaucoma research based on Thomas Kuhn's ideas on science and scientific development. Scientific progress in glaucoma is in a very critical phase of transition from the old paradigm to a new one yet to be determined. Noting the practical implications of the analysis of this phase is very crucial to warrant the safe passage of the scientific community from this stage. After a comprehensive review of the history of glaucoma, we explain how the failure of the old paradigm in solving new problems brought about some calls for paradigm shift and resulted in the current transition phase. Evaluating the current literature, we depict the present situation and the potential constructive and destructive consequences of being in this phase. At the end, we provide some practical implications that might facilitate this process and avoid extreme deviation from the correct pathway.

Learning Objectives:

• Our knowledge of glaucoma is currently in a very critical phase, which is called transitional phase. We can hardly find any researcher in the field of vision care who has not noticed the significant controversy between different parties who are working on glaucoma. In fact, the scientific community is so polarized that some of our colleagues can hardly understand each other.
• This presentation reviews the advancement of our knowledge about glaucoma from 200 years ago and highlighting the reasons that we are now in this critical transition phase, it explains the current situation in context of Kuhn's ideas (with a summary of Kuhn's viewpoints). Clarifying the constructive and destructive characteristics of this phase, the paper recommends some policies to endorse the constructive characteristics and prevent destructive consequences.
• I hope that by training researchers about the current situation, we can accelerate the transition of scientific community to the new paradigm.
• One very important point in this presentation will be the discussion on Kuhn's ideas that can be generalized to the other fields of science and researchers can apply these rules in their own fields of interest.

Keywords: Vision Care, Public Health

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.

Recorded presentation