In 1992, a group of rebel doctors published a radical idea in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association. They argued that the practice of medicine needed to be transformed so that doctors didn’t rely on intuition and conventional wisdom, but on evidence from science – such as clinical trials showing whether a drug really worked. This was called “evidence-based medicine”, and the backlash against it was fierce. Some doctors complained that it was a “dangerous innovation” that restricted their traditional freedom to practise and prescribe as they saw fit. Happily, the mavericks ignored them, their approach proved itself to be better for patients, and quickly became the norm.

Today, it feels like the world is rejecting science again. Donald Trump calls climate change a “con job”. The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, is undermining vaccines and slashing science agencies by 25,000 staff. Alternative facts and misinformation are rife. In the UK, only 40% of people think that information they hear about science is “generally true”.

But there’s a bigger picture – and a more hopeful counter-narrative: the quiet, decades-long movement by which evidence from research is becoming integrated into our lives. I’ve spent the past five years speaking with more than 200 experts in evidence from around the world while researching my book, Beyond Belief. The experience showed me a fresh way to make decisions – and five........

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