Book review: Evidence-based policy: a practical guide to doing it better

"Evidence-Based Policy: A Practical Guide to Doing it Better." Nancy Cartwright and Jeremy Hardie. Oxford University Press. 2012. --- 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 analyse evidence the right ones? Evidence-Based Policy contends that the dominant methods which are in use now – methods that imitate standard practices in medicine like randomised control trials – do not work. Michael Bassey believes policymakers should engage in the kind of critical and analytical processes advocated by this book before rolling out social changes.