Teaching Evidence-Based Management You’re not alone: the story of the evidence movement
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Mar 10, 2026 
Helen Pearson, senior editor at Nature and honorary professor at UCL, and author of Beyond Belief, maps the rise of the international evidence movement. She traces its roots in medicine, explains how ideas like trials and syntheses spread across fields, and discusses why management struggles with evidence. The conversation closes with practical shortcuts for spotting robust research and teaching evidence literacy for the next generation.
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Origins Of The Modern Evidence Movement
- The modern evidence movement largely began with pioneers of evidence-based medicine who challenged eminence-based practice.
- Iain Chalmers and David Sackett adopted randomized trials and systematic reviews to decide which treatments truly worked, coining evidence-based medicine in 1991.
Medical Ideas Catalysed Cross-Field Evidence Use
- Ideas and methods from evidence-based medicine spurred similar movements across policy, policing, conservation and management in the 2000s.
- Increased research supply, cross-field diffusion and motivated 'lone wolves' drove uptake around a 2010 peak (e.g., political attention to evidence-based policy).
Disciplinary Silos Slowed A Unified Movement
- Different evidence movements developed in silos because disciplines use different languages, journals and cultures, limiting cross-disciplinary learning.
- Practitioners asked different questions (e.g., 'clinical trial' vs 'evaluation'), so interdisciplinary meeting points were rare until recently.
