Tuesday, June 30, 2020

Employing evidence to make policy is an unnatural act

--- Robert Shea, in conversation with Bob Hahn on the Two Think Minimum podcast, "Robert Shea on Evidenced Based Policy’s Impact and Potential," June 29, 2020,

From the transcript:

Hahn: So how does that differ from how things work in Washington or other places around the world today? I mean, don’t politicians and civil servants use evidence? What’s the big deal here?

Shea: Yeah, you must’ve gotten this a lot too when you told people you worked on the commission on evidence-based policymaking, oh my god, we need a commission for that? That’s not what we do every day? No, employing evidence to make policy is an unnatural act. Today, politics, emotion, anecdote are more likely to drive policy than evidence. This whole movement, the evidence movement is all about trying to more and more get policymakers to look at data and evidence, and use it in their policy making.