I would be interested in others opinions, but I think this is quite balanced and excellent. I am going to draw on it in my talk to the graduate students in Hong Kong, where I will be addressing responsibly turning epidemiology into public health policy. Of course, I would not be so absurd to suggest that the graduate students can instruct their government, given the current crisis, but I will use this kind of material to suggest they can build in some education of policymakers and journalists into their publications, rather than leave it to chance. The idea of responsibly is to avoid hype and to be very specific about the limitations of data, particularly associations arising in epidemiological observational data. To this end, we suggest 20 concepts that should be part of the education of civil servants, politicians, policy advisers and journalists — and anyone else who may have to interact with science or scientists. Politicians with a healthy scepticism of scientific advocates might simply prefer to arm themselves with this critical set of knowledge. We are not so naive as to believe that improved policy decisions will automatically follow. We are fully aware that scientific judgement itself is value-laden, and that bias and context are integral to how data are collected and interpreted. What we offer is a simple list of ideas that could help decision-makers to parse how evidence can contribute to a decision, and potentially to avoid undue influence by those with vested interests. The harder part — the social acceptability of different policies — remains in the hands of politicians and the broader political process.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 16:52:34 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015