Why is evidence so hard for politicians?

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Found this great article about the proposed changes in the NHS. I would also read the article before it too.


http://www.badscience.net/2011/02/why-is-evidence-so-hard-for-politicians/

Its by Ben Goldacre who writes in the Guardian. He is a Doctor who has a love of evidence based practice and pointing out errors in the media and such like especial about statistics and clinical evidence.

I would also recommend his book BadScience which made me laugh and Angry all at once.

G

 

The problem is that all governments of whatever colour cherry pick figures to suit their own ends. Equally, it is unsurprising that mortality figures fell during the last administration because massive amounts of money were thrown at the NHS. Unfortunately, the last administration also left a massive fiscal disaster the results of which are just beginning to be felt.

It is in the interest of all governments to improve health (and other matters), but to do this and balance the books is another matter. Pilot studies are generally ineffective because they are isolated, and GP fund holding - with Primary Care Trusts - is a very different scenario from GP consortium fundholding. The difficulty is that you can only demonstrate the effectiveness/non effectiveness of the various models by creating them and then observing their effect.

I remain neutral on the issue (except to say that the previous model led to vast management overmanning issues), but it should be noted that The Guardian is a left-wing newspaper and that Goldacre and his co-authors were happy to attack this profession.

Bill Liggins

 

There's a few of us on here who are fans of Ben Goldacre. See these previous threads referencing him:

Bad Science, The HIV Hoax

Anyone following the MMR vaccine and Autism debate?

My (second) favourite website

 

Goodaye Bill;
certainly left of mainstream media, which is generally all right wing, with Fox the extreme.
They supported the Liberal Democrats in the 2010 election, and has had the audacity to criticise the Zionist governments of Israel! unheard of

 

Hi Mark

In general the UK newspapers tend towards the right, although the Daily Mirror is far to the left and the Independent tends to be LibDem leftish. The Times I generally find pretty neutral, although it's owned by you-know-who. The Sun is also owned by the same group and tends to blow whichever way the wind is blowing, although it has claimed in the past to determine in which direction the wind blows!

TV news media tend to be leftish, especially the BBC, whilst by contrast, radio seems pretty neutral. I suspect that, as always, there is self interest at work.

Cheers

Bill

 

The problem politicians have is that they like to give the impression that they are 'in charge' of the country if they are elected by the public to serve a term of office. They produce a promisary note (manifesto) of what they will do when they are 'in power' usually at the same time as condemming the opposing political parties as being next to useless - and yet, when elected, they embark on a policy programme remarkably similar to their predecessor. Much like the pigs in Mr Orwell's Farm.

The real problem is that the politicians are neither 'in power' or 'in charge' - and whatever 'evidence' is gathered from whatever field - is really of little consequence to those who are. Hence the legion of broken promises, misleading statements and lies, damned lies. Tony Benn summed it up recently.

 

Hi Bill,
Can I infer that the podiatry profession is right-wing - given that left-wing newspapers are happy to attack it?
Regards,
Owen

 

Hi Owen

Don't forget that the left wing BBC happily attacks the profession also.

I can only infer that podiatry has no wings. If it had, it would have flown years ago instead of languishing in the dust!

Cheers

Bill