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In the context of physical therapy specifically, it is worth reviewing the work of Carol Davis, DPT, who has offered important clarifications on how ethics (distinct from morality) should be taught and practiced. 16 Still more recently, social justice perspectives and a closer focus on personal morality have challenged and reshaped definitions of what is ethical within medical practice. Narrative ethics appeared on the scene in the 1980s, promising real change. Instead of bringing the breadth of medical knowledge to bear on a set of walking symptoms, they attempted a form of "ground-up" ethics that started with the individual patient and adapted how the medical knowledge base could be appropriately applied to their particular situation. Through a series of interdisciplinary exchanges, "narrative ethics merged the perspectives of humanities scholars with the viewpoints of clinicians facing ethical situations in patient care." 17 Utilizing techniques from the social sciences and literary disciplines to help reconcile difficult or contradictory information, a narrative physician (or a narrative ethicist in role of mediator) listens "closely to stories told by patients and their families, searching for the necessary voices that might have been silenced . . . so that their stories, too, through representation, can become visible and can aid in envisioning the way forward. By reading these accounts together, patients, ethicists, and clinicians can together discover central but sometimes hidden elements in the situation they face." 18 It is claimed that such narrative practices are not simply a means to an end, but are "the therapy itself." 19 In facilitating the decision-making process for the patient, by returning their own agency to them, the subject-object disparity is neutralized. If we look back at the key principles of bioethics leading back to Hippocrates, we might note that this is the true definition of applying justice and doing no harm. First and foremost, we must dispense with the quest for certainty, and examine our own assumptions, prejudices, and biases. This is the first step toward self-awareness, critical thinking, and compassionate, ethical practice. Evidence-Based Medicine Around the same time that bioethicists were reexamining the social and moral dynamics of health care, the question of scientific method also came under close scrutiny. Calls to standardize research methods and to practice within a clear evidence-based framework took center stage, championed in the 1970s by epidemiologist David Sackett. Aiming to counter broad variability in the quality of health care, as well as traditional deference to medical authority, he argued that a more critical and scientific approach was needed, defined as "the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients." A more recent definition clarifies that "evidence-based medicine is the use of mathematical estimates of the risk of benefit and harm, derived from high-quality research on population samples, to inform clinical decision- making in the diagnosis, investigation, or management of individual patients." 20 46 m a s s a g e & b o d y wo r k m a rc h /a p r i l 2 0 2 1 The ensuing revolution made EBM the standard model of teaching, researching, and practicing medicine, nursing, and the biomedical sciences on both sides of the Atlantic—providing a blueprint for the regulation, implementation, and management of health care and its economic and legal offshoots. 21 Scientific research was revolutionized, with the modern research hierarchy (randomized controlled trials, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses) emerging as a result. Though largely based on pharmacological research, this fresh focus on evidence-based practice extended across biomedical and allied health practice. The scientific publishing model—now critical to any scientific career—is largely based on quantitative EBM, with the structure of scientific publishing shaped to build evidence, although how much of this ever trickles