Evidence-Based Analysis Quotes

I would say that I am an academic in politics. I have never abandoned my academic approach to observe reality, independently from the subject and its constant changes.

Every work of history is a combination of argument and narrative. The longer I write, the more I emphasize the narrative, the story, and the less attention I give to the argument. Arguments come and go.

Good policy analysis recognizes that physical truth may be poorly or incompletely known. Its objective is to evaluate, order, and structure incomplete knowledge so as to allow decisions to be made with as complete an understanding as possible of the current state of knowledge, its limitations, and its implications.

Our whole educational system, from the elementary schools to the universities, is increasingly turning out people who have never heard enough conflicting arguments to develop the skills and discipline required to produce a coherent analysis, based on logic and evidence. The implications of having so many people so incapable of confronting opposing arguments with anything besides ad hominem responses reach far.

Ultimately, bridging the practice of forensic science and the public's need for story may be difficult. We crave narrative, order from chaos, a mystery solved, good guys winning out over the bad ones. But science, and forensic science, should be more neutral and, thus, more nuanced.

As a scientist, you're not supposed to make decisions without the data.

Scientific criticism has no nobler task than to shatter false beliefs.

I think it's very healthy to use journalistic and legal techniques to investigate the evidence for and against Christianity and other faith systems.

Journalists should recalibrate themselves to be more skeptical of the consensus of their peers. That’s because a position that seems to have deep backing from the evidence may really just be a reflection from the echo chamber. You should be looking toward how much evidence there is for a particular position as opposed to how many people hold that position: having 20 independent pieces of evidence that mostly point in the same direction might indeed reflect a powerful consensus, while having 20 like-minded people citing the same warmed-over evidence is much less powerful.

Whenever one assumes the role of historian, friendship and enmities have to be forgotten. Often one has to bestow on adversaries the highest praise…. I hope to satisfy … by appealing to the evidence of actual events and of eyewitnesses.

An actual scientist embraces debate because it sharpens their research.

The work of an intellectual is not to mould the political will of others; it is, through the analyses that he does in his own field, to re-examine evidence and assumptions, to shake up habitual ways of working and thinking, to dissipate conventional familiarities, to re-evaluate rules and institutions and to participate in the formation of a political will (where he has his role as citizen to play).

Much of the self-righteous nonsense that abounds on so many subjects cannot stand up to three questions: (1) Compared to what? (2) At what cost? and (3) What are the hard facts?.

The more history I learnt, the less interested I got in winning arguments and the more interested in establishing the truth.

Now obviously the propositions of the system have reference to matters of empirical fact; if they did not, they could have no claim to be called scientific.

Our job is to get as close to the verified truth as is possible.

I cannot understand for the life of me why DOE is going forward with this licensing procedure when we do not know whether or not the scientific documentation upon which you are basing your decisions is, in fact, flawed.

Scientists disagree among themselves but they never fight over their disagreements. They argue about evidence or go out and seek new evidence. Much the same is true of philosophers, historians and literary critics.

I spend my life mostly disproving conspiracies.

I discourage passive skepticism, which is the armchair variety where people sit back and criticize without ever subjecting their theories or themselves to real field testing.

The inquiries of the jurist are in truth prosecuted much as inquiry in physic and physiology was prosecuted before observation had taken the place of assumption.

If any expert or scientist reaches a conclusion or espouses a view that departs from the ideologue’s world view, it is the expert that he examines carefully and not his ideology.

There is no justifiable prediction about how the hypothesis will hold up in the future; its degree of corroboration simply is a historical statement describing how severely the hypothesis has been tested in the past.

What we want is scientists who don't become part of the policy discussion: All they do is produce science. If someone becomes an advocate, then I won't pay as much attention to their science.

Most of our financial laws are the outgrowth of experience and trial, and should not be amended without investigation and demonstration of the wisdom of the proposed changes. We must both be sure we are right and make haste slowly.