Nancy Cartwright

Jeremy Hardie

Over the last twenty or so years, it has become standard to require policymakers to base their recommendations on evidence. That is now uncontroversial to the point of triviality - of course, policy should be based on the facts. But are the methods that policy makers rely on to gather and analyse evidence the right ones? This book explains that the dominant methods which are in use now - broadly speaking, methods that imitate standard practices in medicine, like randomised control trials - do not work. They fail because they do not enhance our ability to predict if policies will be effective.

A Practical Guide to Doing It Better

Evidence-Based Policy

Over the last twenty or so years, it has become standard to require policy makers to base their recommendations on evidence. That is now uncontroversial to the point of triviality--of course, policy should be based on the facts. But are the methods that policy makers rely on to gather and analyze evidence the right ones? In Evidence-Based Policy, Nancy Cartwright, an eminent scholar, and Jeremy Hardie, who has had a long and successful career in both business and the economy, explain that the dominant methods which are in use now--broadly speaking, methods that imitate standard practices in medicine like randomized control trials--do not work. They fail, Cartwright and Hardie contend, because they do not enhance our ability to predict if policies will be effective. The prevailing methods fall short not just because social science, which operates within the domain of real-world politics and deals with people, differs so much from the natural science milieu of the lab. Rather, there are principled reasons why the advice for crafting and implementing policy now on offer will lead to bad results. Current guides in use tend to rank scientific methods according to the degree of trustworthiness of the evidence they produce. That is valuable in certain respects, but such approaches offer little advice about how to think about putting such evidence to use. Evidence-Based Policy focuses on showing policymakers how to effectively use evidence, explaining what types of information are most necessary for making reliable policy, and offers lessons on how to organize that information.

Ann C. (PhD candidate Thresher, PhD candidate University of California San Diego)

Jeremy (Research Associate Hardie, Research Associate CPNSS London School of Economics)

Eleonora Montuschi

Eleonora (Associate Professor Montuschi, Associate Professor University Ca' Foscari Venice)

Matthew Soleiman

Matthew (PhD candidate Soleiman, PhD candidate University of California San Diego)

Ann C. Thresher

Science is remarkably reliable. It puts people on the moon, performs laser eye surgery, tells us about ancient civilizations and species, and predicts the future of our climate. What underwrites this reliability? This book argues that the standard answers--the scientific method, rigour, and objectivity--are insufficient for the job. Here we propose a new model of science which places its products front and centre. In The Tangle of Science we show how any reliable piece of science is underpinned by a vast, diverse, and thick network of other scientific products. In doing so we bring back into focus areas of science that have been long neglected, emphasizing how every product, from the screws that hold the space shuttle together, to ways of measuring the consumer price index, to Einstein's theory of general relativity, work together to support results we can trust.

Reliability Beyond Method, Rigour, and Objectivity

The Tangle of Science

Jeremy Hardie

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