Scientific advancement can be held back by the scientific method, which requires all patients with the same disease have the same cause, or the finding is deemed an “association”. Chronic diseases can have more than one root cause and different diseases can have the same root cause, which confounds the scientific method. Chronic diseases evolve over years and decades, which also limits the ability of the scientific method to identify a cause during a limited research study.

Scientific advancement can be held back by specialization. Specialties may fail to recognize important knowledge arising in different specialties, or that different specialties are finding and observing the same thing. Collaboration across specialties is necessary for discovery, because the answer to chronic disease is seldom found in one specialty alone!

Observation, thought, and reasoning from what is known across specialties reveals commonalities and patterns in chronic disease, which can aid in discovery of the root causes of chronic disease.