in fact protoscientific. Thus as science became the norm, unscientific and pseudoscientific approaches qualified as quackery. In the 21st century, the next phase of differentiation on this topic is underway. All clinical practice based on medical science is (by that fact) based on empirical evidence to a large degree, but efforts are underway to make sure that all of the science on any given medical topic is consistently applied in the clinic, with the best portions of it graded and weighted more heavily. This is the latest cycle in which personal experience (even expert opinion with scientific basis) is not considered good enough by itself. Thus, in evidence-based medicine, the goal is that every clinician will make decisions for every patient with total mastery and critical analysis of the entire scientific literature at their fingertips. This is a formidably vast goal to implement operationally (because it is not even possible for one person to master all extant biomedical knowledge on the basis of individual education), but development of health information technology such as expert systems and other artificial intelligence in medicine is underway in pursuit of it. See also Broad-spectrum antibiotic References Works cited Therapy