Blurb:

This article looks at team talk in a validation committee meeting assessment of a guidance document text item. The item assessment is not evidence-based in terms of Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) criteria; instead it is assessed via the professional knowledge and experience of the committee members present, i.e., using their practice-based practitioner members’ knowledge. ‘Mere opinion’ is revealed as systematic evaluation of professional knowledge and personal experiences, in ways ‘compatible’ with thought experiments. Thought experiments are argued to be a members’ resource as well as an analyst’s one, although its detailed occasionedness is not reducible to a constructivist formalisation. The approach is informed by ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, and while the use of thought experiments as a heuristic device in the analysis is controversial, a warrant for this is attempted. The research was undertaken to locate ways of understanding and supporting the team members’ work of robust and useful guidance content production. What ‘validating’ guidance is, is shown in-and-as the emergent collaborative work of the committee members themselves.