Tag: power of storytelling

Beyond – and more important than – the medical details, this article raises questions about the power of individual stories, in this instance case studies, of what might be fluke happenings or might be patterns of rare but significant side effects of a vaccine. Deep reflection on what happened when the teller was not just a patient but a scientist, one of several authors on a peer-reviewed article reporting findings in a journal, and how his trajectory would have been lost in a randomized clinical trial but might be quite significant if put together with two or three others with similar progressions. Also significant that his radiologist and co-author was his brother; not everyone has such a keen listener to their health narrative, nor would most people be able to tell them in such detailed and credible ways.

Useful for discussions of scientific knowing vs storytelling in e.g. a rhetoric or composition class; science writing (author reflects at the end on her hesitation about writing the story at all, given potential misuses and misstatements of the facts she presents); power of stories; doctors as patients.