Evidence under assault: how to fight back against the forces of unreason

In 1992, a group of rebel doctors published a radical idea in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association. They argued that the practice of medicine needed to be transformed so that doctors didn't rely on intuition and conventional wisdom, but on evidence from Science – such as clinical trials showing whether a drug really worked. This was called “evidence-based medicine”, and the backlash against it was fierce.

Rejection of evidence is not new

Despite the initial pushback, doctors and patients now draw on knowledge from rigorous research when working out what to do. By 2014, this change had been called “one of modern medicine's greatest intellectual achievements” and ranked alongside the discovery of sanitation and anaesthesia.

Knowing this puts the current situation in context. It's not that people are suddenly rejecting evidence – it's that people only recently started using scientific evidence to routinely guide decisions in health and policy, and this is one of many setbacks along the way.

Evidence is everywhere, even in education

Take education. Over half of English schools and more than 1.5 million children have taken part in careful studies testing which educational techniques – such as tutoring, feedback and phonics – are best at helping kids learn. More than 70% of school leaders say they use research when making decisions.

And three economists won the 2019 Nobel prize for showing that anti-poverty programmes could be tested – just like drugs – to see if they work. Policies shaped by these experiments have touched the lives of an estimated 850 million people, at least.

So how can we fight back against the forces of unreason? First, get some historical perspective. The idea that medicine should fundamentally be based on research is a surprisingly recent one; right up to the 1980s, many doctors weren't taught to study clinical trials.

Then, be willing to ask for evidence behind claims. Even if a claim is all over social media, it could be nonsense if there's no credible research that backs it up. Check if scientific claims stand up to scrutiny by seeing if a referenced study is peer-reviewed and published in an academic journal.

Finally, cultivate a sense of humility about Science and what changes minds. Research is complex, changing, frequently uncertain, sometimes flawed and often fails to provide clear answers. But we have plenty of good stories and big wins in our corner too – so let's tell people those stories.