You’re not alone: the story of the evidence movement

People working in evidence-based management can sometimes feel like they are swimming against the tide. But they are part of something much larger.

In this episode we hear from science journalist Helen Pearson about her new book Beyond Belief: How Evidence Shows What Really Works.

The conversation steps back from evidence-based management to look at the much wider evidence movement that has been unfolding across disciplines over the past few decades. From medicine and social policy to policing, conservation and business, researchers and practitioners have been grappling with the same question: how do we know what really works?

Helen traces the origins of the modern evidence movement, beginning with the pioneers of evidence-based medicine in the late twentieth century, and explains how ideas such as randomized trials and systematic reviews spread across many other fields.

The discussion explores:

• The origins of evidence-based medicine and the role of pioneers like Iain Chalmers and David Sackett
• How ideas from medicine influenced other domains including policy, policing and management
• Why early advocates of evidence often worked in isolation across different disciplines
• Why evidence-based management faces particular challenges in bridging research and practice
• The current “crisis of evidence” and the forces shaping trust in science today
• Why teaching evidence literacy and critical thinking may be one of the most powerful tools for the future

Helen also shares practical advice for anyone wanting to think more critically about claims and evidence in everyday life.

For students and teachers of evidence-based management, the episode offers a reminder that they are part of a much broader international movement seeking to improve decisions through better use of evidence.

Beyond Belief: How Evidence Shows What Really Works will be published in April 2026.

Host: 

Karen Plum

Guest: 

Helen Pearson, Senior Editor, Nature, Honorary Professor of Practice, UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies 

Click here for more details about Helen's book.

Contact:

Eric Barends, Managing Director of the Center for Evidence-Based Management

Transcript

Karen Plum: 00:00

Hello, and welcome to the Evidence-Based Management Podcast. I'm your host, Karen Plum, and today we're stepping back from Evidence-Based Management to look at the much wider movement that it's part of. Across fields like medicine, social policy, policing, conservation, and business, people have been asking a similar question. How do we know what really works? So in this episode, we're going to explore the history of that evidence movement and what it means for those of us working in evidence-based management today. I'm delighted to be joined by Helen Pearson, author of Beyond Belief, How Evidence Shows What Really Works, which will be published later in the spring. Helen, welcome. 

Helen Pearson: 00:46

Thanks very much for having me. 

Karen Plum: 00:48

It's a pleasure. Before we dive into the fascinating areas that you speak about in the book, could you say a little bit about your background and what led you to write Beyond Belief?

Helen Pearson: 00:59

Sure. So my deep background is I did train in science, in genetics, but a long time ago I made the switch into science journalism, and I've been a journalist and editor for Nature for over 20 years now. I've written one book before this. This is my second. And really, that the first book sort of led to the second because in my first book was called The Life Project. I met Iain Chalmers and interviewed him. And he is a really key pioneer of evidence-based medicine. He founded the Cochrane Collaboration and kind of piqued my interest in starting to understand the evidence movement. And also in my stories for nature, I assess bodies of evidence all the time as a journalist. So it's absolutely fascinating to me and kind of foundational to my own work.

Karen Plum: 01:43

Right. So it felt like an extension of what you were already doing.

Helen Pearson: 01:46

Exactly. Yes. 

Karen Plum: 01:48

Wonderful. Okay. Well, it's a great entry point for the story that you tell in the book. So I wanted to ask you when you trace the history of the evidence movement, where do you see its real beginnings? Is it medicine or is it something before that?

Helen Pearson: 02:05

It depends a bit how far back in history you want to go. I mean, you can go all the way back if you want to like the 1700s and early randomized controlled trials and even beyond that. But I think that the way I start the story in the book, and I think where the sort of modern evidence movement starts, is probably with these kind of pioneers of evidence-based medicine. And I just mentioned one. And there are these two kind of parallel but actually quite entertaining stories of people, sort of rebellious young doctors who were finding this is Iain Chalmers was one, he was in the UK, and then there's David Sackett, another famous figure who was in Canada. 

And both of them were training in the 50s and 60s in medicine and came to realize that different doctors in the hospitals they were working at were giving out different advice for the same problem, which was very kind of puzzling to them. And they didn't know which doctor was right, and they didn't know kind of which treatment was most effective. And generally what happened was that everyone would follow the advice of the most senior doctor in the room, which is sometimes now called eminence-based medicine. 

Anyway, and then both of them came across randomized controlled trials and were very kind of inspired by this and came to realise that the sort of rational way to decide whether one treatment is more effective than another is to use empirical evidence, so evidence from observational studies or experimentation. And they also both came to think that the sort of best and most unbiased form of evidence was from randomized trials which test whether treatments help and do not harm. So Chalmers went on to found the Cochran Collaboration, which has become, you know, very well known for doing these rigorous systematic

Helen Pearson: 03:43

 reviews of evidence and really kind of helped, I suppose, build this bedrock of systematic reviews on which evidence, you know, modern medicine is really now based. And then Sackett and many others at McMaster Medical School went on to found this teaching style called evidence-based medicine, where students were given a problem to solve and expected to go to the library and find evidence that answered that,  rather than just following the advice of the most senior doctor in the room.  and then from there, I would say sort of evidence-based medicine sort of flowers. And an interesting point is that the term was only coined in 1991. So it's really a very recent phenomenon which most people don't realise.

Karen Plum: 04:23

This is evidence-based medicine?

Helen Pearson: 04:25

Correct. Yeah, it appears in the literature, in the literature for the first time in 1991. Even though the you know the roots of it were developing, it was just that particular phrase was introduced at that point. 

Karen Plum: 04:35

Okay, because I was wondering before the emergence of evidence-based medicine, what did it mean to make a decision based on evidence? What did that look like?

Helen Pearson: 04:45

I  mean we can speculate, right? Maybe if you'd asked doctors 50 or 100 years ago, do you use evidence in your practice? They might have said yes, but the evidence probably would have been their experiential evidence.  And of course, I mean, we can get into a long debate about what evidence is, because the whole term, it's really slippery, I think.  and I've used it in my book, and I think you know, you probably use it to mean what we really mean is evidence from research. But that, you know, for many people, evidence means what's introduced in a court of law, or it can be used to mean, well, it's just some information gathered based on my anecdotal experience. So I think that, you know, maybe is quite an important part of this conversation around evidence and maybe some of the confusion around it.

Karen Plum: 05:29

Absolutely. And of course, in evidence-based management, the Center for Evidence-based Management talks about the four different sources of evidence,  obviously scientific literature being one of them, but the experience of  practitioners and stakeholders and organizational data also play a part, and it's the bringing together of all of those things. But recognising that what you say about, you know, a person's personal expertise and personal experience still has to be validated before it's accepted as a robust form of evidence.

Helen Pearson: 06:05

Yes, it does. And I do think in a lot of conversations, though, that evidence is taken to be synonymous with evidence from research. And so maybe that, I mean, I agree with you, of course, that you know, that people's personal, I mean, one of the really interesting things about evidence-based medicine in the early days was this recognition that evidence from research was only, it never alone told you what to do. So that the founders kind of realized that you have to take into account a patient's individual circumstances, their values, their preferences. And that's the across all of the fields I've looked at. You know, it's one part of the information you need to reach a decision. Now, whether you call all those other strands of information evidence, I think we could have a debate about.

Karen Plum: 06:47

Yes, yes. It's neat to call them such, but I take your point. So as the idea spread beyond the field of medicine, do you see common forces driving the shift towards the use of evidence, however we define that, across the different fields?

Helen Pearson: 07:06

Yes, and I mean that there is definitely a kind of timeline that is shared, a sort of shared building of momentum, I think, across these fields I looked at. And I looked at, as you mentioned, sort of policy, conservation, education, management, policing, and others. So there's seemed to be this real kind of growth of interest in evidence-based practice in a lot of these fields, sort of in the early 2000s, maybe building up to a kind of peak around 2010, with, you know, for example, Obama talking about evidence-based policy. So, you know, why was that happening? I mean, I do think evidence-based medicine, the diffusion

Helen Pearson: 07:42

of ideas and methods from evidence-based medicine was a really important part of that, because that spread very, very fast. And it meant that people in other fields were encountering those ideas. So that that was definitely a shared force. I think another part of it might just be the kind of growing supply of evidence, because we've just seen this sort of enormous growth of the research enterprise itself, right? So there's more studies, there's more supply of randomized controlled trials, those, those methods were being adopted across more fields. 

So there's more evidence to use. And then the other common thing that that I found and wrote about was that often there were these key people who would, and these are the stories I told in the book, that you would have these kind of rebellious people who were maybe looking for a different way to do things, and they were sort of really unsatisfied with how decisions were being made, and that everybody was using conventional wisdom, whether it be in conservation or management or whatever. And then they would they would get completely fired up by these ideas of evidence-based medicine and want to bring those ideas into their own field. So I think that's a kind of common force as well.

Karen Plum: 08:46

Yes, I know Eric Barends at the Center talks about the lone wolves when he's talking about teachers. And you know, there are these little sort of pockets of people going, really? Well, you know, let's look for a different way to do that.

Helen Pearson: 09:00

That's exactly right. And sometimes those people have been  they've been in positions of influence, I think. So they've become fired up and then they've been able to make change because of who they are and that they're charismatic and were able to sort of drive change through a field. Yeah.

Karen Plum: 09:14

But interestingly, I think what I've seen talking to some teachers is that they become a pocket of expertise and it doesn't really grow. And they're not necessarily  well connected to other people that think like they do. They're almost looked at in their institution as a bit of an oddity. You know, it's somebody who does something different than what the rest of us are doing. Yes. Which again speaks to the nature of this sort of slow growing of a movement from these little bright spots all over the place in a sense.

Helen Pearson: 09:49

Yes. And, you know, one of the interesting things that having looked at some of the history and these different fields is that opposition, I mean, that opposition you're talking about, that isn't this a peculiar way to do things, I mean, that's been there through the history of the evidence movement. I mean, the pioneers of evidence-based medicine, including Iain Chalmers, were compared to terrorists at one point for this radical idea that you would actually, you know, challenge what  senior doctors said was the right thing to do. So it's a very uncomfortable feeling, right, to be challenged with evidence. And, you know, I guess in in some cases, due to circumstance or timing, people have been able to overcome that and get momentum behind these movements. And in other cases, it's much harder.

Karen Plum: 10:31

Yes. And you can see the parallels certainly in management of how decisions are taken in organizations, commercial organizations, where it's the highest paid person in the room or it's the you know the person with the most power, you know, sort of coming back to the point you were making earlier. And so we've got these leaders of these different disciplines. Actually, you know, relatively recently, if we're talking about the last sort of 25

Karen Plum: 10:56

years, really, aren't we? For that these movements were all gathering pace, they were weren't necessarily aware of each other, I think you mentioned in the book. They're beavering away in their own area of it's either policy or it's  policing or whatever it is, but not really aware that there is another pocket of expertise growing somewhere else. Why do you think that was?

Helen Pearson: 11:20

Yes, that was definitely the case. And one of the goals I had in in writing this book is to kind of show that this bigger movement was unfolding, right? And I mean, there's lots of books about evidence-based medicine or evidence-based policing, but I wanted to kind of connect this up into a big movement and then kind of take it to a bigger audience. So I don't find it all that surprising, I suppose, because I think it's really common that disciplines and professions tend to work in silos. You see that all the time, certainly in academia, because you take in in research, you have to be quite specialized in order to do that research. And, you know, the research enterprise is set up with specific departments and journals, which are very specialized. And people use different languages, you know, and have different cultures. 

So in medicine, they talk about testing a therapy in a clinical trial, but in social policy, you test an intervention using an evaluation. So just the languages themselves make it a bit harder, I think, to communicate. I think also there hasn't been a really obvious maybe interdisciplinary meeting point for all of these different fields, although I think those are happening more now. And also, you know, although there are these sort of shared problems and forces in these different fields, they've also got their own unique problems, which maybe make people question, you know, how well, how much can I really learn from medicine? Or what, you know, what has evidence-based conservation got to teach me over in management, for example?

Karen Plum: 12:42

Yes, it's another layer of complexity and challenge I've got to grapple with, and I've got enough on my own plate potentially. Yes. So, how does evidence-based management fit into the wider trajectory of what's been going on with all of these disciplines?

Helen Pearson: 12:58

Yeah, I mean, I think it fits really well in terms of the kind of timing. It was also sort of emerging early 2000s, 2010s. I mean, I interviewed, you know, Denise Rousseau, who had this speech at the Academy of Management in 2005, saying, do we need evidence-based management? And then there was a little flurry of books coming out around that time as well.  so it certainly, yeah, it fits very well in that. I mean, I do also think having looked at these different fields, like the headwinds against evidence, seem to be quite strong in in management, in ways like I would say it's almost the field where either evidence is earliest in its journey or it's sort of struggled the most. 

And we can talk about various reasons why that is. I mean, one of the problems I think management shares with a lot of other fields is this kind of divide between academics and practitioners. Like that's a really common thing, where you know, all this research is being pumped out, but it's not necessarily leading, you know, reaching the people who use it, whether that be educational research reaching teachers or management research  reaching managers. But I think, you know, some of the challenges that management faces is most people don't train in management. 

So, you know, in medicine, I mean, this this I think is one of the kind of key lessons maybe that emerges from evidence-based medicine. Like maybe one reason that it took off was that it emerged in medical schools. So, you know, and then it spread to medical schools. So, so students are coming in, they're learning these techniques at the very beginning of their career and they take it into practice. And most other fields don't have that. So you're trying to reach people already kind of ingrained in their ways and then trying to change their behavior, which is very hard. And then, particularly in management, you know, there's no required, there's no required formal learning in management. Most people, I mean, this happened to me, is you train in something else and then you suddenly get promoted, and it's like, oh, now I've got to, you know, manage people. And so 

Karen Plum: 14:51

I'll wing it. 

Helen Pearson: 14:52

Oh, yes. So you'll wing it, and no one tells you that there are like thousands and thousands of studies that could really, really help you, you know. And 

Karen Plum: 14:60

And they're not written for you. 

Helen Pearson: 15:02

No, they're not written for you. I mean, that's a common thing across fields. It is, I mean, you know, I saw that accusation levelled to academics across multiple fields is that you're writing this research, you do research on what you think is important, and then you publish it in a form in which nobody can understand it.  So that's shared. And I think you know, another thing that might be pushing evidence out into the world more is now there's more pressure on academics, right, to show that their work has an impact in the world. And so there's a force there as well, which perhaps might encourage more use.

Karen Plum: 15:36

Yes. I mean, as you've looked at the different areas, does management seem to be the same as other areas in terms of people's commitment to their own practice? Or is that just a human thing? So, so in terms of, well, I'm 20 years as a manager, therefore that's accumulated expertise. I know what I'm doing. I don't need, you know, I don't need evidence. I've just got my gut instinct and what's always served me well in the past. Yeah. Is that just a human thing or is that a  managerial artefact?

Helen Pearson: 16:13

No, I think I think that's a human thing. I mean, you can see you can see that in schools and teaching, you can see that in policing, you know, people who've been working for years  as police, any anyone who reaches a senior level and has, you know, feels that they reached a level of expertise. I mean, it's very difficult to go, well, you know, maybe I was I was wrong all these years, and or not necessarily wrong, but there could be a more effective way to do things. Yeah.

Karen Plum: 16:36

 And that's the challenge then, isn't it? Because we're then looking at change.

Helen Pearson: 16:41

Yes, and changing. Changing people's behavior is just notoriously difficult. Yeah.

Karen Plum: 16:47

Yeah. So thinking about something you say in the in the book or towards the end of the book, you're talking about a crisis of evidence, the backlash against evidence and science, particularly around sort of the pandemic and beyond. Is that a crisis of evidence itself, or is it a crisis of trust? Do you think?

Helen Pearson: 17:10

Well, it depends how you frame it. So I do think there's a bit of a conversation. I'm actually reporting something for this  about this for Nature at the moment, about, you know, is there a crisis of trust in science, right? I mean, that's sort of what you're what you're talking about. And I do think that these are difficult times for evidence, with obviously, you know, politically, we've got some political leaders, Trump and so forth, who are just ignoring facts and, you know, RFK Jr. putting out misleading health claims and undermining evidence-based medicine. And I think also just the I mean, I think the internet has just made it so much harder for evidence to stand out amongst this wealth of other information.

Karen Plum: 17:53

Yeah. So everybody has their own evidence, right?

Helen Pearson: 17:56

Everyone's got their own evidence, right. So and I think you know, this sort of current opposition to evidence does be need to be understood and taken seriously. If you actually

Helen Pearson: 18:05

look, I've been looking at this this week, but if you actually look at like surveys around, for example, trust in science, there's quite a high level of trust in science amongst the public, and it's been quite constant. but nevertheless, you know, there are these forces which are working against it. And I suppose one thing I hoped that the book would do is  sort of offer a bit of perspective, maybe, in you know, reminding us that there's always been opposition to evidence whenever it's being introduced, and perhaps  giving a bit of perspective and that this is what a sort of 40, 50 year movement, which is still slowly unfolding and that there's still great progress. I mean, I don't want to be naively optimistic in the book, which is why it is important to talk about this opposition, but, you know, that it is slowly growing and spreading despite some of these difficulties which have emerged.

Karen Plum: 18:55

Yeah, it's interesting. I talk to teachers of evidence-based management, they talk very warmly about the reaction of  undergraduate level students sort of seizing on this approach and saying, Finally, something I can use to that's practical, but also that I can navigate all of the stuff that I'm seeing on social media, on the internet, in the media,  you know, facts, alternate facts, my truth, somebody else's truth, all that sort of stuff. And I find that quite encouraging that that's coming from that generation of people.

Helen Pearson: 19:33

It is so encouraging. And I suppose, I mean, I really want my book to be empowering by maybe taking this idea of evidence to more people and sort of offering it doesn't knowing about evidence doesn't give you simple answers, but it just gives you a way to maybe start navigating this information overwhelm  that we're in. And I do think that training  young people in how to navigate evidence is a really positive way forward, actually. 

And one of the stories I write about in the book is this work which has been done, for example, by Andy Oxman and his colleagues. This is in public health, where they actually developed a school module to teach young children how to be able to tell whether health claims are believable.  And they literally teach them simple ideas around randomization and that, you know, having more people in the  study makes it more reliable than the one that has very few people, and you know, that you have to, in order to know if something works, you need to compare it to something else. And they went off and tested this whole approach in a in randomized trials itself and showed that these children were better at critical thinking after this. And I just found that really encouraging, actually, that, you know, maybe if it is very difficult to change, people are set in our ways in their ways now. Is there an opportunity to  sort of empower the next generation, right? Because it just seems an absolute imperative that we're giving people the tools to survive in this world of information overwhelm.

Karen Plum: 21:02

Absolutely. And I remember talking to a teacher who'd done a big  curriculum revision exercise to see what the incoming students were looking for and what were the gaps. And one of the really important things was about teaching them skills that would help them to differentiate themselves in the world and you know, not get swallowed by AI. And of course, critical thinking is one of the key ones there. And so it what always strikes me is the is the teaching of the ways of thinking as part of this use of evidence, so that we don't just either accept things that are stated as facts and we do question them.  because there's always the speed thing, isn't there? It's always that, oh, we've got to do things quickly and we've got to make decisions quickly, and we've got to know things quickly. And the whole thing about taking a more evidence-based approach. Seems to me, is just to slow all of that process down.

Helen Pearson: 22:04

Yeah, maybe. But you know, if you start implying that thinking about evidence has to take ages, I think you're going to put people off. I mean, Eric and Denise

Helen Pearson: 22:12

 Rousseau are, I think, quite good. I mean, I like their pragmatic approach. They're just like, if you can just take, and I wrote this into the book, but if you just take five minutes to think about the decision you're making, like what's the problem I want to solve here? What's the evidence there even is a problem? You know, what are just a few potential solutions? And can I just have a quick look around for some evidence? You know, that in itself is really powerful. 

Karen Plum: 22:35

Absolutely. 

Helen Pearson: 22:36

So I think we want to lower the barrier to, you know, to entry for evidence, not suggest it's very difficult. And to me, you know, that the most powerful thing people can do is just is just ask for the evidence behind a claim. Maybe if you just have that question of like, well, is this really believable? Like, then then that in itself is a step, isn't it, towards

Karen Plum: 22:56

Think about it.

Helen Pearson: 22:58

Yes, towards critical thinking.

Karen Plum: 22:60

Yeah. Yes, yeah, absolutely. Well, we before we wrap up, there was just one thing I wanted to pick up because it really made me smile, and that was the notion of spray on evidence.

Helen Pearson: 23:10

Well, spray on evidence was said to me by somebody who was a senior policymaker and advisor in the Blair government who was talking about because the idea of evidence-based policy was really bubbling up in kind of the, you know, the New Labour government around the same time it was being discussed in the Clinton administration in the US. And but he pointed out that in the early days there was a lot of sort of talk about evidence-based policy, but really it was spray on evidence, which is basically deciding on the policy that you want to introduce and then looking for some evidence that supports it, which of course is going on a lot today. I mean, arguably that's exactly what goes on with you know some of the decisions that RFK Jr. has made by cherry-picking evidence. So I don't think that that's going away. It's a good name, isn't it?

Karen Plum: 23:55

There's nothing new there. No. But it's also the, you know, when you do try to take a more evidence-based approach, you're met with people who say, Oh, research, yes, well, you know, everybody finds their own favourite bit of research. I've got some research that supports my positions, and you know, and that's not what we're talking about. As you've just said, it's the cherry picking that's the problem there, and not, you know, an evaluation of all of the evidence that's available.

Helen Pearson: 24:19

Yeah.

Karen Plum: 24:20

so that you don't lead yourself in a particular direction.

Helen Pearson: 24:24

But I think, you know, I think there's just that that point about synthesizing evidence. I mean, I've become this like evidence synthesis geek after reporting this book, but it's such like a sort of it's such an intuitive and powerful idea that we should get together all of the evidence to answer the question, not just look at a couple of studies. And I don't think that that's really widely understood.  and for many people, you know, again, we come back to this terminology perhaps, but it, you know, evidence-based could can just be based on my favorite study, but that differs to how it might be used amongst evidence, you know, geeks, which is which is we need to critically analyse, you know, this evidence first, see what's reliable, synthesize it and so forth.

Karen Plum: 25:06

Right. So as we come towards the end and thinking of our listeners who are predominantly students or teachers of evidence-based management, what part of the wider history that you've documented through the stories in the book do you hope that they understand?

Helen Pearson: 25:27

Well, I think if you're just going to read one part of the book and understand it, then read the beginning, which is which is around this this these early days of evidence-based medicine. I mean, the bigger thing I want them to understand is that they are part of this bigger movement and there's solidarity there, right? You're not just fighting this alone. There's literally thousands and thousands of people in all these different fields who are all effectively trying to do the same thing and kind of use science in a way that will make the world better and that will help people. But I think understanding that, you know, only sort of, you know, 40, 50 years ago that that doctors were going through exactly these challenges. And you know, now really evidence-based medicine has become the predominant way in which medicine is practiced can offer some, again, some perspective and maybe some hope.

Karen Plum: 26:15

Yeah, absolutely. And if people look back in 50 years' time, I'm wondering what they might say about this phase of the evidence movement. What do you think?

Helen Pearson: 26:27

I think it's a difficult phase. And somebody I quoted in in the book, Geoff Mulgan, I think, said that the forces for and against evidence are in the balance and it's not clear which way they will go. So I think, yes, I think it's a difficult moment. I find it very hard to believe, but obviously I'm sort of an evidence fan now that you know evidence will just die away. I don't think this knowledge is going away, right? We've got this enormous amount of useful knowledge and we need to find a way to use it. I just don't think that we've got yet the sort of the tools and the mindset to make that possible. But maybe it's just a difficult adolescence for the for the evidence movement. I'm not sure yet.

Karen Plum: 27:09

Yeah. I know you say in the book, once the light bulb goes on, it doesn't go off again. Yes. And you know, maybe it dims a little bit, maybe you get a bit discouraged. But you know, once you've had that aha moment, you stick with it. I think in or it feels like people stick with it  once they've had that revelation, if you like. But I know that at the completion of the book are some hacks that you suggest. Perhaps you could run us through those as we finish the episode.

Helen Pearson: 27:43

Yes, I did. I mean, you know, it I don't think the hacks are going to be hugely illuminating for maybe your listeners who are probably already in the world of evidence. But  I was thinking of kind of the science-interested reader who is sort of the light bulb has started to go on and sort of think, oh yeah, you know, I really want to use evidence in my decisions. So I mean, yes, briefly, briefly I said be skeptical and ask for the evidence, which I think is just this basic  first step. I suggested that people, if they're looking for evidence, look for rigorous research. And by rigorous, I mean, you know, look for peer-reviewed research. I mean, a lot of people don't realize that something that has been peer-reviewed and is in a scholarly journal has at least been through some level of scrutiny.

Helen Pearson: 28:29

I'm not suggesting that all peer-reviewed research is right, of course, because there's a lot of bad research in the world, but it's a starting point. Consider the strength of the study. Has it been done on five people or five hundred people? And look for evidence syntheses as well, if possible, that might address your question. I think again, to channel Denise Rousseau and Eric, you know, aim for better decisions, not perfect decisions. So just a little bit of consideration of evidence might lead to a better decision. I also suggested turning to evidence centres like the Cochran Collaboration, the Campbell Collaboration. You know, there's lots of, and of course, the Centre for Evidence-Based Management, lots of places which people don't necessarily know about, which can supply the type of evidence they might need. And I suggested training, which I think I mentioned before, seems to be one of the ways in which you know we can encourage use of evidence.

Karen Plum: 29:22

Yeah. I mean, I think those hacks,  accepting what you say about the likely audience, but I think it's always good for people to have that sort of ready list to hand or somewhere that they can point other people to that they're trying to convince or to turn on the light bulb for. So I think it's  a great part of the book that laid out so smoothly, let's put it that way.

Helen Pearson: 29:46

I hope it's useful for people.

Karen Plum: 29:48

So a final question. I'm I just wondered if anything in particular surprised you as you traced the history of the evidence movement across the different fields. Or maybe there were lots of things. 

Helen Pearson: 29:60

Well, there were lots of things.

Helen Pearson: 30:02

I love it when evidence crops up in unusual places or discovering these just extraordinary randomized trials which have been done, you know, which you just like. The one there's one in the book about testing whether toughened glass can prevent glass injuries. And so there was this randomised trial that took place, which pub goers in parts of England were unknowingly part of if they bought a pint at some point in the 19, I thought, I think it was the 1980s, because they these pubs were randomly assigned to get either toughened glass or standard glass. And the trial suggested that actually toughened glass really reduced the number of glass injuries. So it's things like that, I think, that that surprised me or that at least made me smile when I was writing the book. 

Karen Plum: 30:44

Wonderful. Well, Helen, thank you so much. It's been a fascinating conversation.

Helen Pearson: 30:49

Thanks very much for having me. It's great to talk to you.

Karen Plum: 30:51

And the book, Beyond Belief, How Evidence Shows What Really Works, will be published in late April, and it's already available to find on places like Amazon. And I should say for listeners, it's a very engaging read. It tells a

Karen Plum: 31:06

big story about the evidence movement across many fields, but it has really accessible examples and stories and characters which make it really a terrific read. 

That's all for today. Thank you for listening and see you next time. Goodbye.