The Sink and the Murder Scene: Rise and Fall of a Causal Model in Contemporary Medicine

Vincenzo Crupi
London School of Economics

The aim of this study is to provide a “rational reconstruction” of an episode in the recent history of medicine. The adopted methodological approach is the so-called “heuristic view of confirmation” (Hcv) constituting an enrichment and development of Lakatos’s methodology of scientific research programmes (Msrp). Hcv is briefly delineated in section 1. Starting from  the mid-Ninties a model for Aids pathogenesis – sometimes labelled the “sink model” – has been proposed and widely discussed among reseachers. The appearance and fate of this model is here presented as a shift occurring whithin  what I will call the “Hiv-Aids programme” or the “viral programme”. In section 2., then, the structure of the leading approach in Aids-research is sketched in terms of Msrp, and in section 3. the general problem-situation as to Aids pathogenesis is described. The heuristic view of confirmation is found to allow an illuminating account both of the construction of the “sink model” (section 4.) and of its appraisal in the light of evidence (section 5.).