This article lurks in that dark corner where education and pedagogy mix with politics and policy. It starts with the obvious presumption that decisions in education ought to be made according to the evidence, but elides the questions of which evidence? and whose evidence? and what counts as evidence? The resulting treatment is not very sound. For example, in the first paragraph it tells us that "for physicians, evidence-based medicine is the norm," but just a few sentences later it asserts, "around half of current diagnosis and treatment is not (yet) evidence-based." In fact, as the footnotes note, "the debate about evidence medicine is lively." Hardly the norm. The real message of this post seems to be the use of 'evidence' to support rationing. "Evidence-based research is also used by doctors to develop a better do-not-do list," writes the author, noting that "university medical centers in the Netherlands are working together to build this list of 1,300 pointless medical procedures for the time being."
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