Evidence-based living

I've had this idea bubbling in my brain for a few years now. It's more of a concept really. Part of my work is about using psychological concepts to understand why health professionals do and do not follow best evidence in their everyday practice. It takes a psychological approach to evidence-based medicine. And in doing so, I've been introduced to the wide and fascinating world of evidence-based medicine (EBM). EBM is the idea that the care that is being provided should rely on the best available evidence from the research literature, rather than on experience and intuition. That is not to say that experience and intuition are necessarily wrong, or that the evidence base is always perfect, but the latter should always inform and guide decision making.

And so back to my concept. EBM is great, but its niche. It applies to health professionals and clearly has implications for my and your health and well-being, but it's still only a specific aspect of life. And so why not expand the idea? Why not move from evidence-based medicine to evidence-based living? I'm not the first person with this idea (cf http://evidence-basedlife.blogspot.com/). But rather than focusing solely on health, I think the concept can be broadened to be as inclusive as possible.

To an extent, there are hints of this already. Newspapers are replete with headlines summarising (usually poorly) some interesting research about some social issue. Newspapers have the capacity to reach a wide audience, but as a medium, they lack the depth and capacity to truly be a credible, non-biased source and curator of evidence. Furthermore, journalists are trained to investigate and report, not to critically examine and summarise research and make recommendations. The latter is a job for a trained researcher. But the point is that there is a 'pull' already... I think people want to know what the 'best' way to do particular things is.

There is a movement afoot to move towards evidence-based policy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence-based_policy), which is sorely needed. There is no reason why politicians largely trained in law should be entrusted with making far reaching decisions for which they have little understanding. I would love to see policy be created and enacted on basis of best available evidence, and more importantly, that if no evidence exists for deciding about a particular policy, research should be commissioned rather than taking a 'lets give it a go and hope for the best'. Rather than endless armchair debate about the value of a particular economic decision, lets run a randomised controlled trial of different options compared to control, which can definitively tell us what works and what doesn't. At the moment, everything is tried, without any control. For instance, Rudy Gulliani is credited with cleaning up New York crime. But the policies he put in place were rolled out across the city, so there is no way to know whether it is the policy itself or some other factor that affected the reduction in crime.

But again, while evidence-based policy is a great step forward, it's still niche. What I'm proposing is a central repository of the best available research on how to live a happy life. Clearly, happiness is subjective, and the repository could cater to various incarnations of happiness. But the bigger point is that there are thousands upon thousands of research papers examining every facet of human life. Most of that research exists in an academic vaccuum. Lets put our knowledge to work to inform our lives. Lets stop relying on only experience and intuition to make the decisions that affect our lives. Lets empower ourselves to make the best decisions we can based on the best available research. Lets live evidence-based lives.