Does a stubborn commitment to 'evidence' stifle innovative thinking?

Seeking the strongest possible basis upon which to make clinical judgements is a desirable and admirable aspiration and I have no doubt that, as time passes, we will get closer and closer to establishing best practice guidelines across the enormous breadth of our profession. As Hjorland (2011) remarks, however, research-based practice is probably a better aspiration (and does not exclude the concept of levels of evidence) than a narrow focus on the shibboleth of evidence-based practice as it may currently be understood or interpreted. Physiotherapy research is, relatively speaking, still in its infancy. By the time physicians started to embrace evidence-based medicine (around 1972) they had a hundred years of research providing a theoretical basis (think of Pasteur, Lister, Koch, Charcot). Perhaps physiotherapists should be prepared to invest in the scientific and theoretical basis of their professional practice before chasing evidence to support it.