Abstract
The aim of this article is to question the epistemic presuppositions of applying behavioural science in public policymaking. Philosophers of science who have examined the recent applications of the behavioural sciences to policy have contributed to discussions on causation, evidence, and randomised controlled trials. These have focused on epistemological and methodological questions about the reliability of scientific evidence and the conditions under which we can predict that a policy informed by behavioural research will achieve the policymakers’ goals. This paper argues that the philosophical work of Helen Longino can also help us to have a better and fuller understanding of the knowledge which the behavioural sciences provide. The paper advances an analysis of the knowledge claims that are made in the context of policy applications of behavioural science and compares them with the behavioural research on which they are based. This allows us to show that behavioural policy and the debates accompanying it are based on an oversimplified understanding of what knowledge behavioural science actually provides. Recognising this problem is important as arguments that justify reliance on the behavioural sciences in policy typically presume this simplification.
Highlights
In both policy circles and academia, there has been increasing interest in using insights from the behavioural sciences in order to inform policymaking
Operations research had an important influence on the behavioural sciences, including neoclassical economics and cognitive psychology; whereas cognitive psychology was consequential to the rise of the behavioural economics
I analysed the knowledge claims about the behavioural sciences prevalent among policymakers as well as in the academic debates on behavioural public policy
Summary
In both policy circles and academia, there has been increasing interest in using insights from the behavioural sciences in order to inform policymaking. In contemporary philosophy of science there is a widely accepted consensus that so-called non-epistemic values— political, social and ethical ones—cannot be separated from the processes of scientific knowledge production (Douglas 2009; Longino 1990; Wylie and Nelson 2007; Anderson 2004; Elliott 2017) They interfere with what evidence is available and whether or not it is regarded as reliable (Douglas 2009), or relevant (Longino 1990); values enter research via background assumptions adopted by researchers in order to make sense of data (Longino 1990) and the concepts they choose to employ (Dupré 2007); values influence the ways in which scientific claims are justified (Intemann 2001). (Sect. 6), I formulate further questions which my analysis provokes
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