Good quick post on evidence based policy and trials in criminal justice

[Sionyn]

quick extract

Ben “Bad Science” Goldacre has just blogged on the importance of randomised controlled trials in the development of policy and has co-authored a Cabinet Office paper whichlooks well worth a read.  He has also written on paucity of RCTs in criminal justice policyto which I would add the situation is even worse in civil justice.  I can think of only one RCT (on the impact of debt advice: see Pleasence et al (£)) and another close to it whichabandoned a quasi-random element (when the Scottish Public Defenders Offices were initially set up clients were allocated to the SPDOs if born in certain months and to private practitioners if borne in others; exceptions were negotiated for certain types of case and then coach and horse was driven through the attempted ‘randomisation’).  This was not assisted by the ability to claim that lawyer allocation was now being determined astrologically.  One of the more shocking omissions is in mediation: the government have put inordinate faith in mediation which is not supported by the evidence.  An attempt at randomisation by Genn et al, was stymied by a judicial ruling which prevented fully random allocation of cases.

http://lawyerwatch.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/testing-innovation-in-legal-services-why-not-more-rcts/

[codeboy2k]

 

Where's the resistors? or the op-amps?  Where's the capacitors?  ... and power supplies?  We need more power supplies in this thread.

There's some law here, but there's clearly not enough Ohms law in this thread (Kirchchoff is missing too )

[amspire]

Sounds like total rubbish to me.

The whole idea is about creating more jobs for more public servants, with no-one being responsible for any decision. All "evidence based trials" fails miserably when the trial criteria is wrong at the start - as it very often is. The hard part is asking the right questions.

They use medicine as an example, and there are huge failures in medical research. It is now looking highly likely that the whole dietry recommendations that the medical profession has been pushing since the 60's is almost totally wrong. The diet has created diseases like diabetes, obesity and a whole host of other problems.

They are going to tale this model and use it for all government policy? Help!

Scrap all this nonsense and start employing good scientists and engineers. Chuck out the lawyers, media consultants, economists, Harvard business graduates, and the rest of the spin merchants.

As far as the use of the field trials for testing out ideas in how to run a legal firm, what is he even talking about? Doesn't he know how to speak English? Looks like the lawyers do not want to be responsible for any decisions they make either. How surprising!

Richard.

[jerry507]

Medicine is immensely complex. Saying that there are huge failures in medical research simply because science has come to new conclusions is ludicrous. Good scientists are at the heart of good medicine so your statements don't jive.

[amspire]

Medicine is immensely complex. Saying that there are huge failures in medical research simply because science has come to new conclusions is ludicrous. Good scientists are at the heart of good medicine so your statements don't jive.

I have no problem using the scientific method to solve scientific problems.

This post is about using the scientific method to solve social problems.

If you take the example of medical research into the recommended diet, the scientific research gives very different results to the recommendations. Scientific research shows that carbohydrates are the cause of many disease, and there is absolutely no scientific research that has ever found any "essential carbohydrate". If you look at the old US food pyramid that followed very expensive medical trials back in the 50's, the trials did not actually prove that the pyramid that had carbohydrates at the base, and a small amount of fat at the top was a healthy diet. When the science was translated to social engineering, the science went out the door.

Fat, particularly saturated fat, has been slandered science the 60's as an evil food, even though the scientific research shows it is a far more nutritious and healthy food then carbohydrates, even the imaginary "good carbohydrates". Fat is bad in conjunction with carbohydrates, but it is the carbohydrates that cause all the problem - the carbohydrates make you fat. Cholesterol is not a bad thing - unless you combine it with a carbohydrate rich diet.

Believe it or not, there is no medical research that has ever proven that fat makes you get fat. There have been trails that have attempted to prove this, but the results have never shown a correlation between fat intake and obesity.

Dieticians love talking about "calories in- calories out" as a principal for weight loss, but the trials to attempt to prove that this concept applies have all failed. In fact the scientific evidence has shown that for people with a tendency to obesity, it can be very dangerous trying to loose weight by continually reducing dietary intake.

How did the medical dietary advice get so far from the scientific research?

Simply, when you start making decisions based on trials that are not purely scientifically based, the results are not scientific in any way. The trials become a justification for decisions, when it should be the decision makers who are responsible for the choices they make - not the flawed trials.

Base decisions on principal, fairness, efficiency, sustainability and equality and get the most competent people to find a good solution. Make them responsible for their recommendations. Don't give anyone a procedural tool that allows them to blame bad decisions on the results of flawed trails.

Richard.