Feyerabendian pluralism in practice: lessons from the Di Bella case

Abstract

This paper contrasts two ingredients of Feyerabendian pluralism: the idea that the proliferation of theories and methods is good for science (the “limited pluralism” view) and the view of knowledge as an ever increasing ocean of mutually incompatible alternatives (the “oceanic” view). We argue that, in order for Feyerabendian pluralism to be tenable, the limited pluralism view should be decoupled from the oceanic one, and the latter rejected. We use as a case study that of Luigi Di Bella, an obscure Italian physician who in 1997-1998 suddenly became a national celebrity as the self-proclaimed discoverer of “the cure for cancer”. When the case erupted, no evidence of the efficacy of Di Bella’s unconventional approach to cancer treatment was available, and the relevant experts concurred that the so-called “Di Bella method” (DBM) did not show any promise. Yet, the Parliament passed a piece of ad hoc legislation authorizing a series of phase II state-funded clinical trials aimed at assessing the DBM. Asking what course of action a Feyerabendian pluralist would have recommended in this scenario allows one to probe into the – limited, as it turns out – validity of some of Feyerabend’s views on theoretical pluralism.