“Fact-based’’ figures in a new suite of verbal tics I find especially annoying: reality-based; evidence-based; knowledge-based. As opposed to what?, I am always tempted to ask.
What in heaven’s name, for instance, is “evidence-based medicine’’? Here is a quote from the august British Medical Journal that should set us straight: “Evidence-based medicine is the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients.’’ And the opposite of this would be … divination? Are men and women trooping out of the nation’s medical schools trained to flip coins or toss the I Ching on the floor of the intensive care unit if a diagnosis isn’t quickly forthcoming?
The notion that “evidence-based medicine,’’ which purports to be only 15 years old, is a new development is especially hilarious. Roughly 2,000 years ago, the Greco-Roman surgeon and philosopher Galen cut people open and found evidence of some remarkable phenomena: that muscles work in contracting pairs, that blood flows from the right to the left side of the heart, and so on. Everything old is becoming new again.
Lazy neologisms tend to metastasize. So now there is evidence-based nursing, evidence-based mental health care, evidence-based design, and of course evidence-based management, yet another faddish business term canonized in the pages of the Harvard Business Review. “To start an evidence-based management movement in your firm: Demand evidence,’’ write Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton. “Whenever someone makes a seemingly compelling claim, ask for supporting data.’’ These ideas are so profound it took two people to dream them up.
