Governments, evidence and politics – some reflections on the UK Govt’s sacking of its chief scientific drugs adviser
There are plenty of examples from education of the UK government introducing major policy initiatives without any evidence to suggest whether they are going to work or not. Indeed, there are also examples where policies have been introduced despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. However, the decision of the government to sack its chief scientific drugs adviser – Professor David Nutt – is perhaps the most stark recent example of the precarious place of evidence-based policy.
Professor Nutt’s position became untenable after he accused government ministers of "devaluing and distorting scientific evidence" regarding the misuse of illicit drugs after the government decided to reclassify cannabis from a Class C to a Class B drug against the advice of its Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. Reacting to his sacking, and quoted in the Guardian (see: http://bit.ly/3CCi2W), Professor Nutt explained that the Prime Minister had ‘made up his mind’ to reclassify cannabis despite evidence to the contrary: "Gordon Brown comes into office and, soon after that, he starts saying absurd things like cannabis is lethal... it has to be a class B drug. He has made his mind up."We went back, we looked at the evidence, we said, 'No, no, there is no extra evidence of harm, it's still a class C drug.' He said, 'Tough, it's going to be class B'. [...] He is the first Prime Minister, this is the first government, that has ever in the history of the Misuse of Drugs Act gone against the advice of its scientific panel.""And then it did it again with ecstasy and I have to say it's not about [me] overstepping the line, it's about the government overstepping the line. They are making scientific decisions before they've even consulted with their experts.”
There are two points worth drawing out from this example. The first, clearly, is the worrying trend of governments (in plural, let’s not just blame this on the present administration) to play fast and free with evidence. The fact that the government can show such disregard for the available evidence, and for its own scientific advisers, is deeply worrying. Let’s be clear, governments have always used evidence selectively; happy to quote it and take the moral high ground when it fits in with its latest policy initiative and yet equally happy to blatantly ignore it when it doesn’t suit. Witness, for example, the government’s reaction just last week to the publication of the findings of the Cambridge Review of Primary Education (see: http://bit.ly/J0xN).
However, and here’s the second point, it is important that in our concern with this latest sacking, we don’t find ourselves occupying the equally untenable position whereby government policy is simply based on evidence with political influences excised completely. After all, policy-making is a complex and inherently political process where value judgements need to be made. The use of evidence is only one component of this process.Take, for example, the issue of boys’ underachievement in school. Let’s assume we have strong and rigorous evidence that a particular classroom-based approach can significantly increase boys’ educational attainment scores. While we may have the evidence that this approach is effective (in terms of increasing boys’ attainment), there remain important and legitimate political considerations to address before we simply press ahead and roll out the approach across all schools.For example, what is the effect of this approach on girls and their educational attainment? It could be that the approach is based upon ‘masculinising’ the curriculum and classroom to make education more appealing to boys. However, this may then alienate girls and thus adversely effects their attainment. Moreover, and in this case, we also need to ask what types of masculinity are being promoted for boys to engage with and aspire to? While such forms of masculinity may be proven to increase boys’ educational attainment, they may have adverse consequences for other aspects of their lives, including their socio-emotional development.
The point is that while governments need to make best use of evidence, they also need to act politically (and actually can’t avoid doing so). However, even political decisions need to be based on evidence rather than mere unsubstantiated belief. In the example above, we would want some evidence of how the particular approach to raising boys’ attainment was actually impacting upon girls. Similarly, we’d also want to ascertain whether there is evidence to support our concerns that the dominant forms of masculinity being promoted were adversely impacting on other aspects of the boys’ development.Of course good evaluative designs of educational interventions not only focus on the intended effects of the initiative in question but also their potentially unintended (and possibly adverse) effects. In this sense, the design of an evaluation and the outcomes to be measured need to be informed by theoretical and political considerations. It is in this sense that while political decisions need to be informed by evidence, the creation of evidence also needs to be informed by political decisions. Politics and evidence are inherently related.
