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Professionals and policy makers sometimes do more harm than good when they intervene in the lives of other people. This should prompt humility and efforts to ensure that policies and practices are informed by rigorous, transparent, up-to-date evaluations of relevant empirical evidence. Systematic reviews of relevant evidence must be designed to minimise the likelihood of confusing the effects of interventions with the effects of biases and chance. Systematic reviews are essential, although insufficient, for informing policies and practice. Critiques of this approach based solely on theory are unhelpful in efforts to protect the public from harmful and useless interventions.

Professionals & policy makers sometimes do more harm than good when they intervene in the lives of other people. This should prompt humility & efforts to ensure that policies & practices are informed by rigorous, transparent, up-to-date evaluations of relevant empirical evidence. Systematic reviews of relevant evidence must be designed to minimise the likelihood of confusing the effects of interventions with the effects of biases & chance. Systematic reviews are essential, although insufficient, for informing policies & practice. Critiques of this approach based solely on theory are unhelpful in efforts to protect the public from harmful & useless interventions. 1 Figure, 39 References. Adapted from the source document.

Because professionals sometimes do more harm than good when they intervene in the lives of other people, their policies and practices should be informed by rigorous, transparent, up-to-date evaluations. Surveys often reveal wide variations in the type and frequency of practice and policy interventions, and this evidence of collective uncertainty should prompt the humility that is a precondition for rigorous evaluation. Evaluation should begin with systematic assessment of as high a proportion as possible of existing relevant, reliable research, and then, if appropriate, additional research. Systematic, up-to-date reviews of research—such as those that the Cochrane and Campbell Collaborations endeavor to prepare and maintain—are designed to minimize the likelihood that the effects of interventions will be confused with the effects of biases and chance. Policy makers and practitioners can choose whether, and if so how, they wish their policies and practices to be informed by research. They should be clear, however, that the lives of other people will often be affected by the validity of their judgments.

Because professionals sometimes do more harm than good when they intervene in the lives of other people, their policies & practices should be informed by rigorous, transparent, up-to-date evaluations. Surveys often reveal wide variations in the type & frequency of practice & policy interventions, & this evidence of collective uncertainty should prompt the humility that is a precondition for rigorous evaluation. Evaluation should begin with systematic assessment of as high a proportion as possible of existing relevant, reliable research, & then, if appropriate, additional research. Systematic, up-to-date reviews of research -- such as those that the Cochrane & Campbell Collaborations endeavor to prepare & maintain -- are designed to minimize the likelihood that the effects of interventions will be confused with the effects of biases & chance. Policy makers & practitioners can choose whether, & if so how, they wish their policies & practices to be informed by research. They should be clear, however, that the lives of other people will often be affected by the validity of their judgments. [Copyright 2003 Sage Publications, Inc.]

An alliance of researchers lays out a framework for taking decisions based on thinking critically about claims and comparisons. Everyone makes claims about what works. Politicians claim that stop and search will reduce violent crime; friends claim that vaccines cause autism; advertisers claim that natural food is healthy. One group of scientists claims that "deworming" programmes (giving deworming pills to all school children in affected areas) improve school performance and health, calling deworming one of the most potent anti-poverty interventions of our time. Another that deworming does not improve either school performance or health. Unfortunately, people often fail to think critically about the trustworthiness of claims, including policy makers weighing claims made by scientists. Schools do not do enough to prepare young people to think critically 1. So many people struggle to assess the trustworthiness of evidence. As a consequence, they may not make informed choices. To address this deficit, we present here a general tool: Key Concepts for Making Informed Choices (Table 1, with examples in Box 2). We hope scientists and professionals in all fields will use, evolve and evaluate it. The tool was adapted, drawing on the expertise of two dozen researchers, from a framework developed for healthcare 2 (Box 1). Ideally, the Key Concepts for Making Informed Choices should be embedded in education for citizens of all ages. This should be done using learning resources and teaching strategies that have been evaluated and shown to be effective. Trustworthy evidence People are flooded with information. Simply giving them more is unlikely to be helpful unless its value is understood. A recent survey in the UK showed that only about a third of the public trust evidence from medical research; about two-thirds trust the experiences of friends and family 3. Not all evidence is created equal. Yet people often don't appreciate which claims are more trustworthy than others; what sort of comparisons are needed to evaluate ...