In this blog series, I generally try to stay non-partisan, avoiding issues that, though important, do not relate to evidence-based reform in education. However, the current administration has just crossed that line.
In a December 16 article in the Washington Post, Lena Sun and Juliet Eilperin reported that the Trump Administration has prohibited employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from using seven words or phrases in their reports. Two of these are “evidence-based” and “science-based.” Admittedly, this relates to health, not education, but who could imagine that education will not be next?
I’m not sure exactly why “evidence-based” and “science-based” are included among a set of banned words that otherwise consist of words such as “fetus,” “transgender,” and “diversity” that have more obvious political overtones. The banning of “evidence-based” and “science-based” is particularly upsetting because evidence, especially in medicine, has up to now been such a non-partisan, good-government concept. Ultimately, Republicans and Democrats and their family members and friends get sick or injured, or want to prevent disease, and perhaps as a result, evidence-based health care has been popular on both sides of the aisle. In education, Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan and Democratic Senator Patty Murray have worked together as forceful advocates for evidence-based reform, as have many others. George W. Bush and Barak Obama both took personal and proactive roles in advancing evidence in education.
You have to go back a long time to find governments banning evidence itself. Perhaps you have to go back to Pope Paul V, whose Cardinal Bellarmine ordered Galileo in 1615 to: “…abandon completely the opinion that the sun stands still at the center of the world and the Earth moves…”
In fear for his life, Galileo agreed, but in 1633, Galileo was accused of breaking his promise. He was threatened with torture, and had to agree again to the Pope’s demand. He was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life.
After his 1633 banishment, Galileo was said to have muttered, “E pur si muove” (And yet it moves). If he did (historians doubt it), he was expressing defiance, but also a key principle of science: “Proven principles remain true even if we are no longer allowed to speak of them.”
The CDC officials were offered a new formulation to use instead of “evidence-based” and “science-based.” It was: “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes.”
This is of course the antithesis of evidence or science. Does the Earth circle the sun in some states or counties, but it’s the other way around in others? Who decides which scientific principles apply in a given location? Does objective science have any role at all or are every community’s beliefs as valid as every other’s? Adopting the ban would hold back research and applications of settled research, harming millions of potential beneficiaries and making the U.S. a laughingstock among advanced nations. Banning the words “evidence-based” and “science-based” will not change scientific reality. Yet it will perhaps slow down funding for research and dissemination of proven treatments, and that would be disastrous, both in medicine and in education. I hope and expect that scientists in both fields will continue to find the truth and make it known whatever the consequences, and that our leaders of both parties see the folly of this action and reverse it immediately.
This blog was developed with support from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Foundation.