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 In the last few days before the Australian federal election, a curious $5million advertising campaign has been launched which claims to be advocating evidence-based policy but does nothing of the Read the whole post –> How much evidence is needed for policy? Why can’t newspapers be more critical when they report findings from research and evaluation, and provide easy links to more details? A new study by researchers from Australia’s major government research instution (the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation – CSIRO) , reviewing the health effects of eating apples, has received the usual standard of reporting Read the whole post –> An apple a day – or cherry-picking the studies?  In the medical profession in particular, there are some very rigid beliefs about what constitutes good enough “evidence of effectiveness” to justify offering, recommending, allowing patients to try, or even just not vehemently opposing a particular type of treatment for a patient. There are some glimmers of hope in other sectors (e.g. in the Best Evidence Synthesis work here in New Zealand). But there are still three areas where there are very serious challenges in building a credible evidence base given the kinds of constraints and realities surrounding them. They are: (1) cutting-edge treatments; (2) treatments that are by their very nature tailored/individualized rather than standardized across patients or populations; and (3) learning what works for small Read the whole post –> What constitutes “evidence”? Implications for cutting-edge, tailored treatments, and small sub-populations  This week we are revisting a classic moment in Australian comedy which seems strangely relevant to this week’s Read the whole post –> The Friday Funny – The Hollowmen Has a large RCT provided definitive proof that vitamin A supplementation is ineffective in reducing maternal mortality? Or could there be another explanation? And why hasn’t the widespread reporting of these findings examined Read the whole post –> Intention To Treat and checking for implementation failure and differential effects – questions about vitamin A trials in Ghana Another example of how misreporting of findings can undermine effective public response to identified hazards. Read the whole post –> Facebook ’spreads syphilis’ – or does it? We recently stumbled across this all-time classic that Genuine Evaluation readers may well appreciate! Smith, G. C. S. & Pell, J. P. (2003, December). Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials. BMJ, 327, Read the whole post –> The Friday Funny: A review of RCTs on parachute use  Greetings, genuwiners! Thought I’d toss a small puzzle into the stream of discussions to start my visit. Ideally, almost all program evaluations need to include a long term follow up, but almost none of the clients can wait for long-term results, so we rarely have the chance to provide one of these. This means Read the whole post –> Long-term effects; what to do with them and without them A recent expose of dodgy statistics in the UK about pests on public transport shows just how hard it can be to, firstly, get to the truth about unreliable or fabricated statistics that are uncritically reported, and, secondly, how hard it can be to get corrections Read the whole post –> 500 cockroaches on a bus – or are there? One of the challenges for genuine evaluation is striking a balance between being overly bold in statements and overly cautious. An example of an analysis that seems to strike this balance is in the Health: Best Treatments blog (a joint project of The British Medical Journal and The Guardian newspaper) of the limitations of recent research that reported: About 1 in 100 people are ‘addicted’ to using the internet, and these people have a greater risk of becoming Read the whole post –> Does excessive Internet use cause depression? |
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