Beyond Belief – Helen Pearson (1)

The article’s author suggested that others should build kingfisher nesting banks with precisely the same specifications—such as two metres high, at an angle of 15 degrees, facing south, above a pool at least one metre deep. To Sutherland, it seemed inappropriate for someone to confidently pontificate about the most effective way to help kingfishers breed based on one anecdotal success. He came to think that an awful lot of nature advice was questionable too.

In some cases, common sense is enough. It’s generally better to create a nature reserve and try to protect species than to let them be destroyed. But Sutherland found that some dogma in conservation was wrong when it was put to the test. He and his colleagues examined standard recommendations for conserving reed beds—important habitats for birds that become overgrown with trees over time. Burning reed beds is a quick way to restore them, but everyone knew it should be avoided because it killed soil invertebrates, such as snails and earthworms.

Yet Sutherland’s careful experiments suggested the opposite: burning did little to harm invertebrates, whereas flooding—which was recommended—decimated them. Similar mistakes were happening all over the world and they affected some of our most iconic species. In India, populations of tigers were for decades monitored using what’s known as the ‘pugmark census method.’ (A pugmark is a wild mammal’s footprint.) An army of people would spend a week or two searching for tiger tracks and making tracings or plaster casts of the left hind foot.

The footprints were supposed to identify individual tigers like fingerprints and were used to estimate the total number of wild animals. In 2003, a group of conservationists showed that this technique was as unreliable as it sounds, that three decades of censuses had produced deeply flawed tiger counts and it was unclear if protection measures had worked. In North America, it’s been common for nearly a century to engineer streams so that salmon and trout can journey upstream and spawn.

These fish are important in river ecosystems and commercially. Stream engineering aims to improve habitats and water flow, for example by building dams or placing boulders in a stream, and these efforts have cost hundreds of millions of dollars over the years.

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Published by Princeton University Press 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 99 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6JX press.princeton.edu GPSR Authorized Representative: Easy Access System Europe – Mustamäe tee 50, 10621 Tallinn, Estonia, [email protected] All Rights Reserved ISBN 978-0-691-20707-0 ISBN (e-book) 978-0-691-28754-6 ISBN (web PDF) 978-0-691-28418-7 Library of Congress Control Number: 2025948698 Version 1.0 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available Editorial: Ingrid Gnerlich and Whitney Rauenhorst Production Editorial: Kathleen Cioffi Jacket Design: Karl Spurzem Production: Jacqueline Poirier Publicity: Matthew Taylor and Kate Farquhar-Thomson Copyeditor: Tash Siddiqui 1kitap1.com/en For Ashby, Lynton and Edwin 1kitap1.com/en CONTENTS Author’s Note ix Introduction 1 PART I.

WHAT TO BELIEVE 15 1 Birth of a Movement 17 2 Evidence-Based Medicine 56 PART II. WHAT WORKS 91 3 Social Policy: The Rise of the Randomistas 93 4 Policing: Evidence on Patrol 119 5 Conservation: Evidence for the Planet 147 6 Business: Evidence-Based Management 174 7 Education and Policy: Evidence in School and Government 198 PART III. WHAT TO DO 231 8 A Crisis of Evidence: The Pandemic and Beyond 233 9 Children and Parenting: Evidence-Empowered Families 263 Afterword: How to Join the Evidence Revolution 280 Acknowledgements 289 Key Sources and References 293 Index 337 1kitap1.com/en AUTHOR’S NOTE THIS BOOK IS about many thousands of people around the world who are trying to use evidence from rigorous research to figure out what works: whether a drug works to improve health, a policy works to combat poverty, or a conservation strategy works to protect nature.

This effort, which has been called an ‘evidence revolution,’ advocates for decisions to be made using empirical evidence rather than conventional wisdom, intuition or authority alone. The effort spans well over 80 years and involves people in professions ranging from medicine to policing, education and government, who have generated many thousands of academic articles and books. This book gives just a taste of that enterprise. It is based on more than 250 interviews that I conducted over approximately five years with researchers, policymakers, doctors and others, as well as meetings I attended, academic publications, books, news articles and other published material.

While doing the research and interviews, and speaking with colleagues and friends, I noticed two things that influenced the choices I made when writing this book.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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• File Extension: .pdf
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• Title: –
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• Language: English (en)

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