The CEO of the Campbell Collaboration, perhaps the leading promoter and facilitator of systematic reviews, has written a short comment on the prospects of evidence-based policy in the aftermath of Brexit and Trump. It has been our observation that the really big decisions that are taken at the political level have never been based on evidence in the form understood by proponents of systematic reviews. The evidence is used at the more technical levels, as described below. So nothing new, really.
First, much of evidence-based policy, and especially evidence-based practice, can get below the politician’s radar. And this will become more and more the case as evidence-based best practice gets incorporated into school management, classroom practice, social care checklists and so on as a matter of routine. There will always be times when politics trumps evidence. The continued appeal of Scared Straight programmes, despite the clear evidence that they don’t work, is an example of this. But such examples can become more and more the exception not the rule.
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