Paper short abstract:

Exploring how anthropology can be wholly companionable in research situations where it is impossible to attain a control group, I discuss a scenario where such an approach was abandoned because it could not meet strict medical methodological standards.

Paper long abstract:

Although often welcome on Public Health grant proposals to illustrate the depth of the research that can be achieved, the Anthropological perspective is often treated as the less-skilled sister when medical formalities must rule in approach and write-up. Using an example from when I was a full-time Lecturer in Anthropology and a Public Health and Policy consultant, I explore the difficulty in backing a medically proposed one-size-fits-all approach, particularly with populations that are hard-to reach or research. I tell the tale that inevitably led to a research project being abandoned because, although willing, the doctors on the project could not make 'it' 'fit' with the strict medical write-up criteria.

This paper, far from damning the doctors involved, hopes to examine the increasingly stringent criteria for research assessment, and how this progressing focus is narrowing our options, limiting our creativity and squelching new ways to solve problems. Locked into specific criteria for both research proposal and publication, I hope to bring to the table this example, as well as some recent and thought-provoking experiences that illustrate continuing division. If one of the tenants of medical anthropology is the integration of alternative systems in culturally diverse environments, how can we begin to achieve this when the parameters to attain the funding or publish the research remain so strikingly divided.