Clinical specificity and the non-generalities of science

How to improve clinical practice and, in particular, that of physical thera py? Currently, several strategies are used which all fit the label 'scienti fication.' These scientific strategies have to make physical therapy's clin ical practice more homogeneous. Sometimes this homogenization is thought to be necessary for other strategies of innovation including effectiveness re search. But it has also been suggested that more homogeneity in the clinic is already itself an improvement. In this article we comment on these strat egies. More specifically, we direct our attention at attempts in physical t herapy to establish a uniform, generally adopted scientific language. We ar gue that these attempts fail to appreciate the specificity of therapeutic w ork. The effectiveness research that follows is therefore liable to take ir relevant variables into account. We illustrate this argument with examples taken from analyses of diverging therapies for stroke patients.