ABSTRACT
Evidence-based medicine, policy, and practice are widely practiced and fiercely discussed now (cf. Reiss 2013: Ch. 11). Proponents of evidence-based approaches to science and policy maintain that treatment decisions and policy interventions should be based on the best available evidence—a view that is hardly contestable. But they also defend an exceedingly narrow view of what good evidence is. They hold, in particular, that randomized trials are the ‘gold standard’ of evidence; evidence produced by other methods is only good in so far as these other methods resemble the gold standard.
