The Evidence Revolution: Why 'Take Nobody's Word for It' Really Matters |
Book Reviews
The Evidence Revolution: Why 'Take Nobody's Word for It' Really Matters
Beyond Belief explains how the "evidence revolution" is helping practitioners, policymakers, and the public understand what really works.
Ronald Bailey | 4.28.2026 8:00 AM
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(Helen Pearson)
Beyond Belief: How Evidence Shows What Really Works, by Helen Pearson, Princeton University Press, 350 pages, $29.95
"Nullius in verba" is the official motto of the world's oldest national academy of sciences, the Royal Society of London. Usually translated as "Take nobody's word for it," the slogan represents a commitment to empirical evidence and experimental proof over reliance on authority, dogma, or tradition.
In Beyond Belief, the award-winning science journalist Helen Pearson writes an engrossing history of the modern "evidence revolution." That movement aims to draw on rigorous research to figure out what works in fields ranging from medicine to management to education to policing to conservation. As Pearson makes shockingly clear, many decisions in these fields are still based on anecdotes, the opinions of authority figures, and conventional wisdom.
Pearson illustrates the dangerous failures of conventional wisdom with a story about Benjamin Spock's vastly influential The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care. Apparently relying on the authority of the eminent pediatrician Paul Woolley, Jr., Spock revised his book in 1958 to say parents should place their infants face down to sleep to avoid choking on their vomit. Incidents of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) increased, even as evidence accumulated that face-down sleeping correlated with a much higher risk of SIDS. It was not until after a 1990 study showed that SIDS infants were nearly nine times more likely to have been sleeping face-down that a public health campaign advised parents to lay........