Ah, thanks! So indeed I was mistaken. I misunderstood it to mean "reverting an unproven/inconclusive treatment" when it actually means "conducting an unproven/inconclusive treatment".
I was confused because "reversal" sounds to me as the act of ceasing to do something, i.e. "reverting" the treatment (if you're a programmer: I thought of "reversal" as in "reverting a mistaken commit using git"). I now see it's a technical term which means the opposite!
Hmm. Sorry, no, that's not my understanding. I think the phenomenon of discovery is distinct from the changing of behavior. I believe it is the discovery itself that is called a "medical reversal." I think the submitted paper defines it in relatively laymen's terms: "Medical reversal occurs when a new clinical trial — superior to predecessors by virtue of better controls, design, size, or endpoints — contradicts current clinical practice."
I think an important difference is that current clinical practice is not necessarily thought to be "unproven/inconclusive." Rather, I think people think it has a solid foundation, but better investigation reveals that not to be true.
I was confused because "reversal" sounds to me as the act of ceasing to do something, i.e. "reverting" the treatment (if you're a programmer: I thought of "reversal" as in "reverting a mistaken commit using git"). I now see it's a technical term which means the opposite!
Now it all makes sense.