Book review: The science of evaluation: a realist manifesto

"The Science of Evaluation: A Realist Manifesto." Ray Pawson. SAGE. February 2013. --- Evaluation researchers are tasked with providing the evidence to guide programme building and to assess its outcomes. They labour under the highest expectations – bringing independence and objectivity to policy making. Have these efforts produced a progressive, cumulative and authoritative body of knowledge that we might think of as evaluation science? This is the question addressed by Ray Pawson. Lawrence Buhagiar finds that this book certainly deserves to be widely read and discussed.