Evidential pluralism in evaluations of carcinogenicity and social interventions (2023-25)
Funder: Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
Evidential pluralism maintains that establishing causal claims requires systematically evaluating a variety of different types of evidence, in particular, evidence from mechanistic studies as well as evidence from association studies. Michael Wilde (MW) and Jon Williamson (JW) have argued that evidential pluralism would lead to better medical and social policy interventions. Their work has so far led to improvements in the methods for evaluating evidence used for establishing causal claims at the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). The aim of this project is to improve further the methods currently used to evaluate evidence at various organisations, including IARC, the US National Toxicology Program (NTP), and UK Central Government Departments.
Project team: Joes Jones (King’s College, London), Michael Wilde (PI, Kent), and Jon Williamson (Kent).
Talks (so far):
22 May, 2023: Evidential Pluralism and the Magenta Book. UK Cabinet Office and HM Treasury’s Evaluation Task Force.
12 September, 2023: Evidential Pluralism and the Magenta Book. UK Evaluation Society.
9 January, 2024: Evidential Pluralism and Evidence-Informed Policymaking. European Commission’s Joint Research Centre.
21 March, 2024: Integrating Quantitative and Qualitative Evidence: The Philosophy of Evidential Pluralism. NHS Analytical Academy.
28 March, 2024: Integrating Quantitative and Qualitative Evidence: The Philosophy of Evidential Pluralism. The Evidence Quarter.
16 April, 2024: Evidential Pluralism and the Key Characteristics of Carcinogenicity. International Agency for Research on Cancer.
Publications (so far):
Joe Jones, Alexandra Trofimov, Michael Wilde & Jon Williamson: Integrating Quantitative and Qualitative Evidence using Evidential Pluralism, Centre for Reasoning report 23/01, 2024. [Open access link to draft.]