Evidence matters for public policymaking. Yet calls for ‘evidence-based policy’ often risk oversimplifying inherently political processes— assuming that particular forms of scientific evidence can directly determine policy decisions, or that politics should be excluded from policymaking altogether. In contrast, this talk (based on the open-access book of the same title), argues that it is critical to move away from asking how policy can be ‘based on’ evidence; to instead consider what better uses of evidence would look like – from both scientific and democratic principles – given the inherently political nature of the policy process. The talk identifies a range of biased and problematic uses of evidence when assessed against these normative principles, leading to the development of a ‘good governance of evidence’ framework. Ultimately it argues for institutionalisation of good governance principles in the form of the structures, rules, and norms of science/evidence advisory systems that can ensure the use of rigorous, systematic, and technically valid pieces of evidence within decision making processes that are representative of, and accountable to, populations served.

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Speaker bio: Dr Justin Parkhurst (BS, MPhil, DPhil) is an Associate Professor of Global Health Policy at the LSE Department of Health Policy. His research interests lie in global health politics and policy, and the political nature of evidence use to inform policy decisions. He led a 5-year programme of work on Getting Research Into Policy in Health  funded by the European Research Council, resulting in multiple open access publications including the book: The Politics of Evidence: From Evidence Based Policy to the Good Governance of Evidence, (Routledge).

He currently co-leads (with Dr Freddie Ssengooba) the ‘Systems of Evidence to Improve Health Policy in Africa’ (SEIHPA) project which studies institutional arrangements and processes that provide science/evidence advice to health policymakers in Uganda, Kenya, Malawi and Rwanda (funded by the National Institute of Health Research – NIHR).

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