Dr Roman Frigg

MSc Economics and Philosophy, MSc Philosophy of the Social Sciences, MSc Philosophy and History of Science, MSc Philosophy and Public Policy and MSc Biomedicine, Bioscience and Society. It is also open to all LSE MSc and research students.

Policy, in order to be sensible, needs to be based on our best views as to how the world is - but these in large part are theories based (or allegedly based) on evidence. Policy makers are not, in general, scientists themselves, but, as we show in this course, they can be helped to ask the right sorts of questions in order to gauge the strength of evidence for various theories.

Topics include the meaning of objectivity, and the extent to which results from the natural and social sciences can be considered objective; the information conveyed and the supposed objectivity of statistical data of various schools, both Classical and Bayesian; critical analysis of the notion of 'evidence' underpinning the 'evidence-based policy' movement, with examples from HIV-AIDS policy in Africa and the measuring of poverty; critical analysis of a similarly tagged movement in medicine - 'evidence-based medicine' - with particular focus on the purported qualities of randomised controlled trials for assessing therapeutic efficacy; evidence issues that arise on the compliance side of policy - uncertainty and issues of 'burden of proof' in environmental management, usage of probability/statistical evidence in the law.

Twenty one-hour lectures (MT, LT) and 20 one and-a-half hour seminars (MT, LT).

Students are expected to write two essays per term and to give class presentations.

Atkinson, AB (1998) Poverty in Europe; Cartwright, N (2007) Hunting Causes and Using Them; Douglas, H  Science in Policy-Making: Objectivity, Values, and Risk; European Commission (2000) White Paper on Environmental Liability; Galison P and Daston, L (2008) The History of Objectivity; Giere, R (1997) Understanding Scientific Reasoning; Gigerenzer, G (2002) Reckoning with Risk; Howson, C and Urbach, P (1989) Scientific Reasoning: The Bayesian Approach; Longino, H (1990) Science as Social Knowledge; Mayo, DG and Hollander, RD (1991) Acceptable Evidence: Science and Values in Risk Management; Penston, James (2003) Fiction and Fantasy in Medical Research. The Large Scale Randomised Trial; Popper, K (2002) Conjectures and Refutations; Tillers, P & E Green (eds.) (1988) Probability and Inference in the Law of Evidence. Kitcher, P (2007) Living With Darwin; Maslin, M (2009) Global Warming. A Very Short Introduction.

A three-hour written examination in ST.