Global change in broad sense refers to planetary-scale changes in the Earth
system. It is most commonly use to encompass the variety of changes
connected to the rapid increase in human activities which started around
mid-20th century, i.e. the Great Acceleration. While the concept stems from research on the climate change, it is used to adopt a more holistic view on the observed changes. Global change refers to the changes of the Earth system, treated in its entirety with interacting physicochemical and biological components as well as the impact humansocieties have on the components and vice versa. Therefore, the changes are studied through means of Earth system science.
History of global-change research
The
first global efforts to address the environmental impact of human
activities on the environments worldwide date before the concept of
global change was introduced. Most notably, in 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment was held in Stockholm, which led to United Nations Environment Programme.
While the efforts were global and the effects across the globe were
considered, the Earth system approach was not yet developed at this
time. The events, however, started a chain of events that led to the
emergence of the field of global change research.
The concept of global change was coined as researchers
investigating climate change started that not only the climate but also
other components of the Earth system change at a rapid pace, which can
be contributed to human activities and follow dynamics similar to many
societal changes. It has its origins in the World Climate Research Programme, or WCRP, an international program under the leadership of Peter Bolin,
which at the time of its establishment in 1980 focused on determining
if the climate is changing, can it be predicted and do humans cause the
change. The first results not only confirmed human impact but led to the
realisation of a larger phenomenon of global change. Subsequently Peter Bolin together with James McCarthy, Paul Crutzen, Hans Oeschger and others started International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, or IGBP, under the sponsorship of International Council for Science.
In 2001, in Amsterdam, a conference was held focused around the
four major global-change research programmes at the time: WCRP, IGBP, International Human Dimensions Programme (IHDP) and Diversitas (now continued as Future Earth). The conference was titled Challenges of a Changing Earth: Global Change Open Science Conference and was concluded with The Amsterdam Declaration on Global Change, best summarized in its first paragraph:
"in
addition to the threat of significant climate change, there is growing
concern over the ever-increasing human modification of other aspects of
the global environment and the consequent implications for human
well-being. Basic goods and services supplied by the planetary life
support system, such as food, water, clean air, and an environment
conducive to human health are being affected increasingly by global
change"
Scientists working on the International Geosphere-Biosphere
Programme have said that Earth is now operating in a "no analogue"
state.
Measurements of Earth system processes, past and present, have led to
the conclusion that the planet has moved well outside the range of
natural variability in the last half million years at least. Homo sapiens have been around for about 300,000 years.
Physical evidence
Humans have always altered their environment. The advent of
agriculture around 10,000 years ago led to a radical change in land use
that still continues. But, the relatively small human population had
little impact on a global scale until the start of the industrial revolution in 1750. This event, followed by the invention of the Haber-Bosch process in 1909, which allowed large-scale manufacture of fertilizers, led directly to rapid changes to many of the planet's most important physical, chemical and biological processes.
The 1950s marked a shift in gear: global change began
accelerating. Between 1950 and 2010, the population more than doubled.
In that time, rapid expansion of international trade coupled with
upsurges in capital flows and new technologies, particularly information
and communication technologies, led to national economies becoming more
fully integrated. There was a tenfold increase in economic activity and
the world's human population
became more tightly connected than ever before. The period saw sixfold
increases in water use and river damming. About 70 percent of the
world's freshwater
resource is now used for agriculture. This rises to 90 percent in India
and China. Half of the Earth's land surface had now been domesticated.
By 2010, urban population, for the first time, exceeded rural
population. And there has been a fivefold increase in fertilizer use.
Indeed, manufactured reactive nitrogen from fertilizer production and
industry now exceeds global terrestrial production of reactive nitrogen.
Without artificial fertilizers there would not be enough food to
sustain a population of seven billion people.
These changes to the human sub-system have a direct influence on
all components of the Earth system. The chemical composition of the
atmosphere has changed significantly. Concentrations of important greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are rising fast. Over Antarctica
a large hole in the ozone layer appeared. Fisheries collapsed: most of
the world's fisheries are now fully or over-exploited. Thirty percent of
tropical rainforests disappeared.
In 2000, Nobel prize-winning scientist Paul Crutzen
announced the scale of change is so great that in just 250 years, human
society has pushed the planet into a new geological era: the Anthropocene.
This name has stuck and there are calls for the Anthropocene to be
adopted officially. If it is, it may be the shortest of all geological
eras. Evidence suggests that if human activities continue to change
components of the Earth system, which are all interlinked, this could
heave the Earth system out of one state and into a new state.
Society
Global
change in a societal context encompasses social, cultural,
technological, political, economic and legal change. Terms closely
related to global change and society are globalization and global
integration. Globalization began with long-distance trade and urbanism. The first record of long distance trading routes is in the third millennium BC. Sumerians in Mesopotamia traded with settlers in the Indus Valley, in modern-day India.
Since 1750, but more significantly, since the 1950s, global
integration has accelerated. This era has witnessed incredible global
changes in communications, transportation, and computer technology.
Ideas, cultures,
people, goods, services and money move around the planet with ease.
This new global interconnectedness and free flow of information has
radically altered notions of other cultures, conflicts, religions and taboos. Now, social movements can and do form at a planetary scale.
Evidence, if more were needed, of the link between social and environmental global change came with the 2008-2009 global financial crisis. The crisis pushed the planet's main economic powerhouses, the United States, Europe and much of Asia into recession. According to the Global Carbon Project,
global atmospheric emissions of carbon dioxide fell from an annual
growth rate of around 3.4% between 2000 and 2008, to a growth rate of
about 2% in 2008.
Societies everywhere are facing unprecedented challenges as a
result of rapid global change (including climate change). In such a
context there is need for generatively contributing to transformative
social learning systems and green skills learning pathways development.
Through this focus, the Chair's work contributes enhancing capacity for
climate resilient development and a sustainable, socially just society
in South Africa and Africa more widely.
Humans are altering the planet's biogeochemical cycles in a largely unregulated way with limited knowledge of the consequences.
Without steps to effectively manage the Earth system – the planet's
physical, chemical, biological and social components – it is likely
there will be severe impacts on people and ecosystems. Perhaps the
largest concern is that a component of the Earth system, for example, an
ocean circulation, the Amazon rainforest, or Arctic sea ice, will reach a tipping point and flip from its current state to another state: flowing to not flowing, rainforest to savanna, or ice to no ice. A domino effect could ensue with other components of the Earth system changing state rapidly.
Intensive research over the last 20 years has shown that tipping
points do exist in the Earth system, and wide-scale change can be rapid –
a matter of decades. Potential tipping points have been identified and
attempts have been made to quantify thresholds. But to date, the best
efforts can only identify loosely defined "planetary boundaries" beyond which tipping points exist but their precise locations remain elusive.
In 2004, the IGBP published "Global Change and the Earth System, a planet under pressure."
The publication's executive summary concluded: "An overall,
comprehensive, internally consistent strategy for stewardship of the
Earth system is required". It stated that a research goal is to define
and maintain a stable equilibrium in the global environment.
In 2007, France called for UNEP to be replaced by a new and more powerful organization called the "United Nations Environment Organization". The rationale was that UNEP's status as a "programme", rather than an "organization" in the tradition of the World Health Organization or the World Meteorological Organization, weakened it to the extent that it was no longer fit for purpose given current knowledge of the state of the planet.
The March for Science (formerly known as the Scientists' March on Washington) is an international series of rallies and marches held on Earth Day. The inaugural march was held on April 22, 2017, in Washington, D.C., and more than 600 other cities across the world. According to organizers, the march is a non-partisan movement to celebrate science and the role it plays in everyday lives. The goals of the marches and rallies were to emphasize that science upholds the common good and to call for evidence-based policy in the public's best interest.
The March for Science organizers, estimated global attendance at 1.07
million, with 100,000 participants estimated for the main March in
Washington, D.C., 70,000 in Boston, 60,000 in Chicago, 50,000 in Los
Angeles, 50,000 in San Francisco, 20,000 in Seattle, 14,000 in Phoenix, and 11,000 in Berlin.
A second March for Science was held April 14, 2018. 230 satellite events around the world participated in the 2nd annual event, including New York City, Abuja, Nigeria, and Baraut, India. A third March for Science took place on May 22, 2019, this time with 150 locations around the world participating.
The March for Science organizers and supporters say that support for science should be nonpartisan. The march is being organized by scientists skeptical of the agenda of the Trump administration, and critical of Trump administration policies widely viewed as hostile to science.
The march's website states that an "American government that ignores
science to pursue ideological agendas endangers the world."
Robert N. Proctor,
a historian of science at Stanford University, stated that the March
for Science was "pretty unprecedented in terms of the scale and breadth
of the scientific community that's involved" and was rooted in "a
broader perception of a massive attack on sacred notions of truth that
are sacred to the scientific community."
After Trump's election, his transition team sought out specific U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) employees who had worked on climate change during the Obama administration.
Prior to Trump's inauguration, many climate scientists began
downloading climate data from government websites that they feared might
be deleted by the Trump administration. Other actions taken or promised by the Trump administration inspired the march, including pulling out of the Paris Agreement, the stances of his Cabinet nominees, the freezing of research grants, and a gag order placed on scientists in the EPA regarding dissemination of their research findings. In February 2017, William Happer,
a possible Trump science advisor with skeptical views on human caused
global warming, described an area of climate science as "really more
like a cult" and its practitioners "glassy-eyed". ScienceInsider reported Trump's first budget request as "A grim budget day for U.S. science" because it contained major funding cuts to NOAA's research and satellite programs, the EPA's Office of Research and Development, the DOE's Office of Science and energy programs, the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Institutes of Health, and other science agencies.
International solidarity
International
sister marches were planned for countries around the world. These both
supported American scientists and climate scientists more generally, and
protested against other impingements on academic freedom
internationally, such as government action against the Central European University in Hungary and the closure of educational institutes and dismissal of academics in the 2016–17 Turkish purges, as well as local issues.
Planning and participants
There needs to be a Scientists' March on Washington.
-Beaverteeth92's original proposal on Reddit
A major source of inspiration behind the planning of the march was the 2017 Women's March of January 21, 2017. The specific idea to create a march originated from a Reddit discussion thread about the removal of references to climate change from the White House website.
In the discussion, an anonymous poster named "Beaverteeth92" made a
comment regarding the need for a "Scientist's March on Washington". Dozens of Reddit users responded positively to the proposal. Jonathan Berman, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas Health Science Center and a participant in the original conversation, created a Facebook page, Twitter feed and website to organize a march. The Facebook group grew from 200 members to 300,000 in less than a week, growing to 800,000 members. Individual scientists have both applauded and criticized this development.
It was announced on March 30 that Bill Nye, Mona Hanna-Attisha, and Lydia Villa-Komaroff would headline the march, and serve as honorary co-chairs. The protest was set to occur on Earth Day, with satellite rallies planned in hundreds of cities across the world.
For the inaugural march in Washington, D.C., the National Committee consisted of (in alphabetic order):
Sofia Ahsanuddin, Valorie V. Aquino, Jonathan Berman, Teon L. Brooks, Beka Economopoulos, Kate Gage, Kristen Gunther, Kishore Hari, Sloane Henningsen, Rachael Holloway, Aaron Huertas, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson,
Rosalyn LaPier, Julia MacFall, Adam Miller, Lina Miller, Caitlin Pharo,
Jennifer Redig, Joanna Spencer-Segal, Lucky Tran, Courtnie Weber,
Caroline Weinberg, and Amanda Yang.
These are the roles of the National Committee along with their teams:
Committees
Team Leads
Team Members
Co-Chairs
Valorie Aquino, Jonathan Berman, Caroline Weinberg
Steering
Sofia Ahsanuddin, Rosalyn LaPier, Joanna Spencer-Segal, Lucky Tran
Logistics and Operations
Kate Gage, Lina Miller
Amanda Yang
Satellite Coordination
Kishore Hari, Caitlin Pharo
Adam Arcus, Jocelyn Barton, Rachael Holloway, Miles Greb, Claudio
Paganini, Markus Strehlau, Erin Vaughn, Hugo Valls, Robin Viouroux
Communications
Aaron Huertas
Atu Darko, Paige Knappenberger, Bridget McGann
Social Media
Beka Economopoulos, Courtnie Weber
Thomas Gaudin, Anna Hardin, Karen James, David Lash, Ed Marshall, Carmi Orenstein, Kristina Sullivan
The University of Delaware Center for Political Communication
conducted a survey of 1,040 members of March for Science Facebook groups
or pages from March 31 to April 18 to study their motivations for
joining the march. Respondents cited the following as reasons for marching:
Reason
Percent rating "very important"
Encouraging public officials to make policies based on scientific facts and evidence
97%
Opposing political attacks on the integrity of science
93%
Encouraging the public to support science
93%
Protesting cuts to funding for scientific research
90%
Celebrating the value of science and scientists to society
To become more involved in politics or policy-making
45%
Before April, enthusiasts found existing knitting patterns for a hat
shaped like a brain and proposed it as a symbol of solidarity for the
march in analogy with the pussyhat project.
The primary march, organized by Earth Day Network and March for Science, in Washington, D.C., began at 10 AM with a rally and teach-in on the grounds of the Washington Monument, featuring speeches by concerned citizens alternating with scientists and engineers; including Denis Hayes, co-founder of the first Earth Day in 1970 and Bill Nye. No politicians spoke at the rally. At 2 PM the crowd of thousands, in spite of the steady rain throughout the day, proceeded down Constitution Avenue to 3rd Street, NW between the National Mall and the west front of the United States Capitol.
Protesters gathered in over a hundred cities across the globe, with an estimated 70,000 participants in Boston, Massachusetts, and over 150,000 in several cities in California.
Professor Robert Proctor of Stanford University said that the March for Science was similar to other efforts by scientists such as Physicians for Social Responsibility;
however, the scale was larger because "there's a broader perception of a
massive attack on sacred notions of truth that are sacred to the
scientific community."
Organizers and some participants of the El Paso March for Science, April 22, 2017
Support
On January 26, 2017, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont expressed his support for the march, congratulating "those scientists and researchers who are fighting back". U.S. Representative Bill Foster of Illinois, a physicist and the only current member of Congress with a Ph.D. in a natural sciences field, will join the march, "not as a Democratic member of Congress, but as a scientist."
Foster said that he viewed the march as political, but not partisan,
saying, "if you see a specific policy that is inconsistent with the
known principles of science, every citizen who is also a scientist
should speak out."
In February the AAAS and other science groups announced their support for the march. Rush Holt Jr., the chief executive officer of the AAAS, expressed support for scientist involvement in politics. Holt also emphasizes the importance of "appreciation for and understanding of science in the general population".
What's so interesting is it's the
first time, I think, anybody can point to in decades where there has
been a spontaneous effort to defend the idea of science. It's not a
march pro or con GMOs or pro or con nuclear power. It's about the value
of science and the power of evidence. People are understandably and
correctly outraged that in so many areas of public policy ideology is
crowding out evidence, that evidence seems to be optional in the
fashioning of public policy, and that you have officials using phrases
like alternative fact.
— – Rush Holt
Criticism
The march received a torrent of criticism from conservative publications for the perceived left-wing bias and orientation of the event. Donald Trump's science adviser, climate change denierWilliam Happer stated that "there's no reason to assume the president is against science" and dismissed the march as a cult.
A number of scientists voiced concerns over the march. Sylvester James Gates
warned that "such a politically charged event might send a message to
the public that scientists are driven by ideology more than by
evidence". Writing in The New York Times, Robert S. Young
argued that the march will "reinforce the narrative from skeptical
conservatives that scientists are an interest group and politicize their
data, research and findings for their own ends" and that it would be
better for scientists to "march into local civic groups, churches,
county fairs and, privately, into the offices of elected officials." Matthew Nisbet, writing for Skeptical Inquirer
magazine right after the first march in 2017, states that it is not the
least educated but the "best educated and most scientifically literate
who are prone to biased reasoning and false beliefs about contentious
science issues". In his opinion this will mean that the March will only
deepen "partisan differences, while jeopardizing trust and impartiality
and credibility of scientists". Nisbet feels that confidence in
scientists is strong, and they should "use this capital wisely and
effectively".
Responding to criticism surrounding the political nature of the march, meteorologist and columnist Eric Holthaus wrote that the scientific field "has always been political" and referred to the example of Galileo Galilei's confrontation with the political order. Holthaus wrote that the scientists must also protest when "truth itself is being called into question".
Discussing science's role in policy and government, Rush Holt points out a fallacy
in viewing science and politics as philosophically incompatible: "The
ethic in the profession is that you stick to your science, and if you're
interested in how science affects public policy or public questions,
just let the facts speak for themselves. Of course, there's a fallacy
there, too. Facts are, by themselves, voiceless."
San Francisco Lead Organizer Kristen Ratan debated Jerry Coyne on KQED'sForum
regarding his criticism of the March and remarked that the millennial
generation is just finding its feet with regard to activism and should
be encouraged. Ratan also distinguished between being political and
being partisan and suggested that while the March for Science is a
political act, it is by no means partisan, which implies blind
allegiance to one party over another. Ratan reiterated that the March
For Science supports evidence-based policy-making regardless of party or
affiliation.
Following the march, the organizers of the March for Science
encouraged people to a "Week of Action" with an outline of daily
actions.
The following spring, Science not Silence: Voices from the March for Science Movement, was published by MIT Press. The book, edited by Stephanie Fine Sasse and Lucky Tran, featured stories
and images from marches held around the globe. It was selected as one
of the "World's Best Human Rights Books" of Spring 2018 by Hong Kong Free Press.
In July 2018, March for Science created and hosted the SIGNS
(Science in Government, Institutions & Society) Summit in Chicago,
Illinois. The summit was co-hosted by Field Museum
and brought together organizers from satellite marches to connect,
strategize, and develop skills to bring back to their communities. The program featured notable figures, including talks by Fabio Rojas, Brian Nord, Adia Benton, and Dana R. Fisher, as well as a poetry reading by Ed Roberson. Many sessions were recorded and are available to view online.
Evidence-based policy is an idea in public policy proposing that policy decisions should be based on, or informed by, rigorously established objective evidence.
The implied contrast is with policymaking based on ideology, 'common
sense,' anecdotes, and intuitions. It is the government equivalent of
the effective altruism movement. Evidence-based policy uses a thorough research method, such as randomized controlled trials (RCT).
Good data, analytical skills, and political support to the use of
scientific information are typically seen as the crucial elements of an
evidence-based approach.
Some have promoted particular types of evidence as 'best' for
policymakers to consider, including scientifically rigorous evaluation
studies such as randomized controlled trials
to identify programs and practices capable of improving policy-relevant
outcomes. However, some areas of policy-relevant knowledge may not be
well served by quantitative research. This has led to a debate about the
type of evidence to use. For instance, policies concerned with human
rights, public acceptability, or social justice may require proof other
than randomized trials provide. Also, policy evaluation may require
moral philosophical reasoning in addition to considerations of evidence
of intervention effect (which randomized trials are principally designed
to provide). The purpose of evidence-based policy is to use scientific evidence
rigorously and comprehensively to inform decisions rather than to allow
political processes to use them in a piecemeal, manipulated, or cherry-picked manner.
Some policy scholars now avoid using the term evidence-based policy, using others such as evidence-informed. This language shift allows continued thinking about the underlying desire to improve
evidence use in terms of its rigor or quality while avoiding some of
the key limitations or reductionist ideas at times seen with the
evidence-based language. Still, the language of evidence-based policy is
widely used and, as such, can be interpreted to reflect a desire for
evidence to be used well or appropriately in one way or another—such as
by ensuring systematic consideration of rigorous and high-quality
policy-relevant evidence, or by avoiding biased and erroneous
applications of evidence for political ends.
The move towards modern evidence-based policy has its roots in the larger movement towards evidence-based practice, which was prompted by the rise of evidence-based medicine in the 1980s. However, the term 'Evidence-based policy' didn't see use in medicine until the 1990s. The term wasn't used in social policy until the early 2000s.
The earliest example of evidence-based policy was tariff-making in
Australia. The legislation required tariffs to be educated by a public
report issued by the Tariff Board. These reported on the tariff,
industrial, and economic impacts.
History of evidence-based medicine
The phrase evidence-based medicine (EBM) was coined by Gordon Guyatt.
However earlier example of EBM trace to the early 1900s. Some argue
that the earliest form of EBM occurred in the 11th century, when Ben Cao
Tu Jing from Song Dynasty said, "In order to evaluate the efficacy of
ginseng, find two people and let one eat ginseng and run, the other run
without ginseng. The one that did not eat ginseng will develop shortness
of breath sooner." Many scholars see the term evidence-based policy as evolving from "evidence-based medicine",
in which research findings are used as the support for clinical
decisions and evidence is gathered by randomized controlled trials
(RCTs), which is comparing a treatment group with a placebo group to
measure results. Even though the earliest published RCTs in medicine were during WWII and post-war era: 1940s and 1905s, the word 'evidence-based medicine did not appear in published medical research until 1993. In 1993, the Cochrane Collaboration
was established in the UK, and works to keep all RCTs up-to-date and
provides "Cochrane reviews" which provides primary research in human
health and health policy.
The evolution of the appearance of the keyword EBM has increased since
the 2000s and the effect of EBM has seen significant expansion to the
field of medicine.
History of evidence-based policy making
Randomized Controlled Trials
were late to appear in the social policy compared to the medical field.
Although evidence-based approach can be traced as far back as the
fourteenth century, it was more recently popularized by the Blair Government in the United Kingdom. The Blair Government said they wanted to end the ideological led-based decision-making for policy making. For example, a UK Government white paper published in 1999 ("Modernising Government")
noted that Government must "produce policies that really deal with
problems, that are forward-looking and shaped by evidence rather than a
response to short-term pressures; that tackle causes not symptoms".
There was then an increase in research and policy activists pushing for
more evidence-based policy-making which led to the formation of the
sister organization to Cochrane Collaboration, the Campbell Collaboration in 1999.
The Campbell Collaboration conducts reviews on the best evidence that
analyzes the effects of social and educational policies and practices.
The Economic and Social Research Council
(ESRC) became involved in the push for more evidence-based policymaking
with its 1.3 million pound grant to the Evidence Network in 1999. The
Evidence Network is a center for evidence-based policy and practice and
is similar to both the Campbell and Cochrane Collaboration. More recently the Alliance for Useful Evidence
has been established, with funding from ESRC, Big Lottery and Nesta, to
champion the use of evidence in social policy and practice. The
Alliance is a UK-wide network that promotes the use of high-quality
evidence to inform decisions on strategy, policy and practice through
advocacy, publishing research, sharing ideas and advice, and holding
events and training.
People practice evidence-based policy in different ways. For example, Michael Kremer and Rachel Glennerster had many theories about what would work best to improve students' test scores. Therefore, they conducted randomized controlled trials
in Kenya. They tried new textbooks and flip charts, as well as smaller
class sizes. However, they found that the only intervention that raised
school attendance was treating intestinal worms in children. Based on their findings, they started the Deworm the World Initiative, which is rated by GiveWell as one of the best charities in the world for cost-effectiveness.
Recently questions have been raised about the conflicts of
interest inherent to evidence-based decision-making used in public
policy development. In a study of vocational education in prisons
operated by the California Department of Corrections, Andrew J. Dick,
William Rich, and Tony Waters found that political considerations
inevitably intruded into “evidence-based decisions” which were
ostensibly technocratic. They point out that this is particularly true
where evidence is paid for by policymakers who have a vested interest in
having past political judgments confirmed, evidence-based research is
likely to be corrupted, leading to policy-based evidence making.
Methodology
There are many methodologies for evidence-based policy, however they all share the following characteristics:
Tests a theory as to why the policy will be effective and what the impacts of the policy will be if it is successful
Includes a counterfactual: what would have occurred if the policy had not been implemented
Incorporates some measurement of the impact
Examines both direct and indirect effects that occur because of the policy
Separates the uncertainties and controls for other influences outside of the policy that may affect the outcome
Should be able to be tested and replicated by a third party
The form of the methodology used with evidence-based policy fits under the cost-benefit
framework. It is created to estimate a net payoff if the policy is
implemented. Because there is a difficulty quantifying some effects and
outcomes of the policy, it is mostly focused on whether benefits will
outweigh costs, instead of using specific values.
Types of evidence for evidence-based policy making
All kinds of data can be considered a piece of evidence. The Scientific Method effectively organizes this data into tests to strengthen or weaken specific beliefs or hypotheses. For example, the results of different tests can be more or less convincing to the scientific community, based on blind experiment type (i.e., blind vs. double-blind), sample size, and replication. However, supports of evidence-based policy attempt to combine what citizens want (within Maslow's Hierarchy of needs) with what the scientific method has shown will be the most likely produce it.
Quantitative evidence
Numerical quantities from peer-reviewed journals, data from public surveillance systems, or individual programs are considered quantitative evidence for policymaking. Quantitative data can also be collected by the government or policymakers themselves through surveys. Qualitative evidence is widely used in EBM and evidence-based public health policy constructions.
Qualitative evidence
Qualitative
evidence includes nonnumerical data collected by methods that include
observations, interviews, or focus groups. Qualitative evidence is
widely used to create compelling stories to impact those in
decision-making authority.
Although the evidence can be divided according to their type, there is
no hierarchical weight over qualitative vs. quantitative data. They are
both efficient in acting as evidence in certain areas than others.
Often, qualitative and quantitative evidence are combined in the process
of policymaking.
Cause priorities
Some
approach Evidence-based policy with cause neutrality: they first define
the goal or human interest and use Evidence-based processes to identify
the most effective method.cause neutrality. Examples of causes include providing food for the hungry, protecting endangered species, mitigating climate change, reforming immigration policy, researching cures for illnesses, preventing sexual violence, alleviating poverty, eliminating factory farming, or averting nuclear warfare.
Many people in the effective policy movement have prioritized global
health and development, animal welfare, and mitigating risks that
threaten the future of humanity.
The alleviation of global poverty and neglected tropical diseases
has been a focus of some of the earliest and most prominent
organizations associated with the movement to use evidence to make
decisions.
The Life You Can Save, which originated from Singer's book of the same name,
works to alleviate global poverty by promoting evidence-backed
charities, conducting philanthropy education, and changing the culture
of giving in affluent countries.
While much of the initial focus has been on direct strategies
such as health interventions and cash transfers, more systematic social,
economic, and political reforms meant to facilitate larger long-term
poverty reduction have also attracted attention. In 2011, GiveWell announced the creation of GiveWell Labs, which was later renamed the Open Philanthropy Project,
for the purpose of research and philanthropic funding of more
speculative and diverse causes such as policy reform, global
catastrophic risk reduction and scientific research. It is a collaboration between GiveWell and Good Ventures.
Focusing on the long-term future,
some believe that the total value of any meaningful metric (wealth,
potential for suffering, potential for happiness, etc.) summed up over
future generations, far exceeds the value for people living today. Some
researchers have found it psychologically difficult to contemplate the
trade-off; Toby Ord
stated, "Since there is so much work to be done to fix the needless
suffering in our present, I was slow to turn to the future."
Reasons Ord gave for working on long-term issues include a belief that
preventing long-term suffering is "even more neglected" than causes
related to current suffering, and that the residents of the future are
even more powerless to affect risks caused by current events than are
current dispossessed populations".
Philosophically, assessing
the suffering of future populations involves multiple considerations.
First, humanity (and other animals) may not exist at all, in which cases
there is no suffering to alleviate (presuming that the process of
eliminating the population does not itself involve suffering). Second,
the cost of an incremental reduction in suffering in the future may be
higher (e.g., because of increasing healthcare costs) or lower (brought
down, e.g., by the ever-crashing cost of computing or renewable energy).
Third, the value of a benefit or cost is affected by the time preferences
of the recipient and the payer. Fourth, future suffering may be
alleviated by current spending, potentially at a lower cost. Fifth,
alleviating suffering sooner may have a knock-on effect of
reducing/increasing future suffering. Sixth, if investing money produces
outsized returns, that may provide the ability to reduce total
suffering by more than if the money is instead donated before it can
accumulate. Seventh, future populations may be so much wealthier than
the current population that, even if a particular reduction in suffering
costs more than it does today, the population might still be better off
by waiting. Singer argued that existential risk should not be "the dominant public face of the effective altruism movement" because he claimed that doing so would drastically limit the movement's reach.
In particular, the importance of addressing existential risks such as dangers associated with biotechnology and advanced artificial intelligence is often highlighted and the subject of active research.
Because it is generally infeasible to use traditional research
techniques such as randomized controlled trials to analyze existential
risks, researchers such as Nick Bostrom have used methods such as expert opinion elicitation to estimate their importance. Ord offered probability estimates for a number of existential risks in his 2020 book The Precipice.
Evidence-based policy from non-government organizations
The Overseas Development Institute
The Overseas Development Institute
claims that research-based evidence can contribute to policies that
dramatically impact lives. Success stories quoted in the UK's Department
for International Development's (DFID) new research strategy include a
22% reduction in neonatal mortality in Ghana as a result of helping
women begin breastfeeding within one hour of giving birth and a 43%
reduction in deaths among HIV positive children using a widely available
antibiotic.
After many policy initiatives, the Overseas Development Institute
evaluated their evidence-based policy efforts. They identified specific
reasons that policy is weakly informed by research-based evidence.
Policy processes are complex and rarely linear or logical. Therefore,
simply presenting information to policy-makers and expecting them to act
upon it is very unlikely to work. These reasons include information
gaps, secrecy, the need for speedy responses and slow data, political
expediency (what is popular), and the fact that policy-makers are not
interested in making the policy more scientific. When a gap is
identified between the scientific and political process, those
interested in shrinking the gap must choose between making their
politicians use scientific techniques or their scientists use more
political methods.
The Overseas Development Institute concluded that, with the lack
of evidence-based policy progress, those with the data should move into
the political and advertising world of emotion and storytelling to
influence those in power. They replaced simple tools such as cost–benefit analysis and logical frameworks,
with identifying the key players, being good storytellers, synthesizing
complex data from their research into simple, compelling stories. The
Overseas Development Institute did not advocate for re-making the system
to support evidence-based policy but encouraged those with data to jump
into the political process.
Further, they concluded that turning someone who 'finds' data
into someone who 'uses' data in our current system involves a
fundamental reorientation towards policy engagement rather than academic
achievement. This focus requires engaging much more with the policy
community, developing a research agenda focusing on policy issues rather
than academic interests, acquiring new skills or building
multidisciplinary teams, establishing new internal systems and
incentives, spending much more on communications, producing a different
range of outputs, and working more in partnerships and networks.
Based on research conducted in six Asian and African countries,
the Future Health Systems consortium has identified a set of critical
strategies for improving uptake of evidence into policy,
including improving the technical capacity of policy-makers; better
packaging of research findings; use of social networks; establishment of
fora to assist in linking evidence with policy outcomes.
The Pew Charitable Trust
The Pew Charitable Trust is a non-governmental organization that has attempts to use data, science, and facts to serve the public good. Pew has a Results First initiative that works with the different US states to implement evidence-based policymaking in the development of their laws. This initiative has developed a framework may be seen as an example of how to implement evidence based policy.
Pew's 5 key components of evidence-based policy are:
Program assessment. Systematically review available evidence on the effectiveness of public programs.
Develop an inventory of funded programs.
Categorize programs by their evidence of effectiveness.
Identify programs’ potential return on investment.
Budget development. Incorporate evidence of program
effectiveness into budget and policy decisions, giving funding priority
to those that deliver a high return on investment of public funds.
Integrate program performance information into the budget development process.
Present information to policymakers in user-friendly formats that facilitate decision-making.
Include relevant studies in budget hearings and committee meetings.
Establish incentives for implementing evidence-based programs and practices.
Build performance requirements into grants and contracts.
Implementation oversight. Ensure that programs are effectively delivered and are faithful to their intended design.
Establish quality standards to govern program implementation.
Build and maintain capacity for ongoing quality improvement and monitoring of fidelity to program design.
Balance program fidelity requirements with local needs.
Conduct data-driven reviews to improve program performance.
Outcome monitoring. Routinely measure and report outcome data to determine whether programs are achieving desired results.
Develop meaningful outcome measures for programs, agencies, and the community.
Conduct regular audits of systems for collecting and reporting performance data.
Regularly report performance data to policymakers.
Targeted evaluation. Conduct rigorous evaluations of new and untested programs to ensure that they warrant continued funding.
Leverage available resources to conduct evaluations.
Target evaluations to high-priority programs.
Make better use of administrative data—information typically
collected for operational and compliance purposes—to enhance program
evaluations.
Require evaluations as a condition for continued funding for new initiatives.
Develop a centralized repository for program evaluations.
The Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy
The Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy
was a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, whose mission was to
increase government effectiveness through the use of rigorous evidence
about "what works." Since 2001, the Coalition worked with U.S.
Congressional and Executive Branch officials and advanced evidence-based
reforms in U.S. social programs, which have been enacted into law and
policy. The Coalition claimed to have no affiliation with any programs
or program models, and no financial interest in the policy ideas it
supported, enabling it to serve as an independent, objective source of
expertise to government officials on evidence-based policy.
Major new policy initiatives that were enacted into law with the
work of Coalition with congressional and executive branch officials.
Evidence-Based Home Visitation Program for at-risk families with young children (Department of Health and Human Services – HHS, $1.5 billion over 2010-2014
Evidence-Based Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (HHS, $109 million in FY14)
Investing in Innovation Fund, to fund development and
scale-up of evidence-based K-12 educational interventions (Department of
Education, $142 million in FY14)
First in the World Initiative, to fund development and
scale-up of evidence-based interventions in postsecondary education
(Department of Education, $75 million in FY14)
Social Innovation Fund, to support public/private investment
in evidence-based programs in low-income communities (Corporation for
National and Community Service, $70 million in FY14)
Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grants Program,
to fund development and scale-up of evidence-based education and career
training programs for dislocated workers (Department of Labor – DOL, $2
billion over 2011–2014)
Workforce Innovation Fund, to fund development and scale-up
of evidence-based strategies to improve education/employment outcomes
for U.S. workers (DOL, $47 million in FY14).
Their website now says "The Coalition wound down its operations in
the spring of 2015, and the Coalition’s leadership and core elements of
the group’s work have been integrated into the Laura and John Arnold Foundation". In 2003 the Coalition published a guide on educational evidenced-based practices.
Critiques
Several critiques have emerged. Paul Cairney, professor of politics and public policy at the University of Stirling in Scotland, argues
that supporters of the idea underestimate the complexity of
policy-making and misconstrue the way that policy decisions are usually
made. Cartwright and Hardie oppose emphasizing randomized controlled trials
(RCTs). They show that the evidence from RCTs is not always sufficient
for undertaking decisions. In particular, they argue that extrapolating
experimental evidence into policy context requires understanding what
necessary conditions were present within the experimental setting and
asserting that these factors also operate in the target of considered
intervention. Furthermore, considering the prioritization of RCTs, the
evidence-based policy can be accused of being preoccupied with narrowly
understood ‘interventions’ denoting surgical actions on one causal
factor to influence its effect.
The definition of intervention presupposed by the movement of evidence-based policy overlaps with James Woodward’s
interventionist theory of causality. However, policy-making encompasses
also other types of decisions such as institutional reforms and actions
based on predictions. The other types of evidence-based decision-making
do not require having at hand evidence for the causal relation to be
invariant under intervention. Therefore, mechanistic evidence and
observational studies suffice for introducing institutional reforms and
undertaking actions that do not modify the causes of a causal claim.
Moreover, evidence has emerged
of front-line public servants, like hospital managers, making decisions
that actually worsen patients' care in order to hit pre-ordained
targets. This argument was put forward by Professor Jerry Muller of the Catholic University of America in a book called The Tyranny of Metrics. According to articles published in Futures,
evidence based policy—in the form of cost-based or risk analyses—may
entail forms of compression and exclusion of the issues under analysis, also in relation to power asymmetries among different actors in their capacity to produce evidence.
A comprehensive list of critiques, including the fact that policies
shown to be successful in one place often fail in others, despite
reaching a gold standard of evidence, has been compiled by the policy
platform Apolitical.
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