No, the public hasn't had enough of experts - or evidence

The general public has had enough of experts, according to Michael Gove. But is he right? On Tuesday I attended a meeting in the Speaker’s House in Westminster with 100 members of the public who disagree with that sentiment. The event, Evidence Matters, was organized by the charitable trust Sense About Science and showcased the importance of evidence to people across all walks of life.

Tracey Brown, the director of Sense About Science, says that this event came about because people got in touch with the organization to ask how it was planning to counter the ‘post truth rumblings’ of recent months. The consensus was that the caricature of a disinterested public needs to be countered. Sense About Science put out a call for stories of the importance of evidence, and collated them in to a booklet that was handed out as we arrived at the event. The public and MPs who were present heard some of the vignettes included in the booklet from fifteen members of the public; football supporters, firefighters and farmers, among others, describing their reliance on evidence in order to do their jobs, or support their interests.

A teacher spoke about the evidence, or lack thereof, around learning styles, and how he wants to use his limited time and resources in the classroom to do things that work. A London-based cycling campaigner spoke about the recent cycling infrastructure changes in Walthamstow, and the use of evidence from TfL to assess the impact of it on the area. The use of evidence around housing policy, domestic violence, and microbead pollution were also described by researchers, activists and housing officers. The CEO of the Silver Line, a 24-hour phoneline for older people dealing with loneliness, spoke passionately about the importance of the phone line, and how evidence gleaned from piloting the concept helped them secure funding to roll it out properly.

The MPs who spoke also showed enthusiasm for the idea of evidence based policy. Thomas Brake, Lib Dem MP for Carshalton and Wallington, spoke of drug policy, and the evidence in favour of treating addiction as a health rather than a criminal issue. Shadow Minister for Industrial Strategy Chi Onwurah reminded us that the plural of anecdote is not evidence, and eloquently expressed the concept of evidence based policy, in contrast to policy based evidence. The politicians present were all very supportive of the cause, and most promoted their own scientific backgrounds, but we know that politicians with such scientific training are exception rather than the rule. Should our politicians be encouraged to get training in critical appraisal and evidence based thinking? Debbie Abrahams, the Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions thinks so, going as far as to suggest including a discussion on the use of evidence in inductions for all elected representatives.

It is naïve to think that all policy decisions will be based on evidence alone, but to understand how to interpret evidence could help politicians make decisions where ambiguity might exist. What can we as the public do to encourage this kind of evidence based thinking in Westminster? We can be vocal to our MPs about the value of evidence based policy, that the public isn’t sick of experts, and that we don’t want to live in a post truth world. We can also help by asking our MPs questions that can be answered with evidence. A key message to come out of the event was the difference between MPs expressing beliefs versus asserting evidence.

The risk of course is that, as Stewart Lee’s apocryphal taxi driver once said, you can prove anything with facts. We all have inherent biases and beliefs, and these can lead to disagreements in how to interpret evidence. These biases shouldn’t be an excuse to ignore the evidence and go with what feels right though. We need even more transparency and an awareness of how our human nature might impact on our perceptions of evidence. Although the scientific method isn’t perfect because humans aren’t perfect, it tries to minimise the potential harmful impact of these biases by imposing structure on the way we assess evidence. Today’s event was a first step in redressing the lazy stereotype of a post-truth public disinterested in evidence or experts, but there is further to go.