Adrian Brown – Centre for Public Impact
Everybody is in favour of evidence-based policy – by definition it must be far superior to the policy-based evidence with which it is often contrasted. This post is a brave challenge to the assertion that there is an evidence base for evidence-based policy. In particular, it argues first that weak evidence can be unwittingly assembled to appear misleadingly strong and in doing so close down policy options which should at the very least be kept open; and secondly that experimentation is a better approach, precisely because it avoids forcing complex issues into simple binary choices.
That’s not an argument that evidence is unimportant, of course. But it’s a good reminder that evidence should be scrutinised and that simple conclusions can often be simplistic.