arotical

yeah this is fair

Here's a scenario: You are tasked with dealing with a problem where there is little research and no scientific consensus. There is plenty of video evidence and other related pieces of non-so-scientific evidence, but most people don't count that in evidence-based policy. What do you do?

Sometimes, I think, we have to make decisions when there's no clear solution, and it's better than just dismissing a very obvious problem as non-existent. So yes, include science in every decision, but it's not the be all end all of society, it never has been, and it's not good to teach people that you can't tackle issues without a known best solution.

I've seen the term 'evidence-based policy' pop up all over the place. I take issue with people who use this phrase because most of the time their definition of evidence is not very well developed, and when the evidence is something they don't like they start to stretch their definition of evidence so they can dismiss implementing a certain policy. If evidence is only restricted to, and dictated by, academic papers, you leave room for companies and news media to start selectively reporting and funding studies they want to see or want people to see. And where are the scientific papers dedicated to studying this problem? No one is going to fund them. Now you have an entire society believing that corporate influence is not real because there is seemingly no evidence for it.

If you only make decisions based on science you can pretend problems aren't real without a scientist's approval, and you can pretend solutions to those problems are bad if there is even a tiny bit of counter-evidence that supports your viewpoint.