The Hidden History of Evidence-Based Everything (with Helen Pearson)

Read the full transcript here.

How do we know whether the things we do every day actually work? Why do so many practices in medicine, parenting, education, conservation, and public policy begin as intuition, authority, or anecdote rather than careful evidence? What can the tragic history of front-sleeping advice and sudden infant death syndrome teach us about the danger of untested conventional wisdom? How should we distinguish between a bad outcome, a bad decision, and a reasonable decision made under uncertainty? When does intuition work well, and when does it fail because we lack repeated examples, tight...