Health examination and scientific inference in occupational health service

Abstract

In spite of doubts in many quarters there seems to be considerable confidence in the benefits of health examinations. In my opinion it is important to analyze the structure and the purpose of the examinations in order to elucidate the practical thinking and logical quality of OHS. In this article I will conceive health examination as an information process and offer types of inference, i.e. prediction, abduction and induction, feasible for the analysis. I will study the logical conditions and possibilities to draw conclusions using these inference methods and try, in a preliminary way, to show how the qualitative or quantitative formulations of presuppositions affect the formulation of the conclusion. Finally I will explicate the implicit purposes of the health examinations stipulated by Finnish legislation with the aid of the above inference methods. I find the methods feasible for analyzing the information process, and will set forth some conditions for presuppositions used with inference and point out the alternative purposes of Finnish occupational health examinations.