Hi, Benjamin here. Welcome to episode 14 of Nature Hits the Books. In this episode, I'm joined by

science journalist and colleague of mine here at nature, Helen Pearson, whose book Beyond Belief

comes out next week. Helen's voice will no doubt be familiar to folk who listen to our

podcasts and watch our videos. And beyond belief is Helen's second book, which looks at the history

of the use of evidence rather than opinion in decision-making. The book traces the course of the

movement in various disciplines, such as the rise of evidence-based medicine

in the 1990s, looking at the rebels who led the charge, the barriers they faced, and why the

use of evidence is crucial at a time when misinformation is rife. A few of the topics we chat about

in this podcast.

Helen Pearson, welcome to Nature Hits the Books.

Thanks very much for having me.

Not at all.

So beyond belief, then, why was now the time to write this book?

And who were you hoping to reach with it?

Well, now is the time to publish the book, I would say, because there's a lot of conversation about, in some ways, rejection of science and evidence. You know, for example, what we're seeing in the US, it's almost become more relevant, I think, as I've written the book. And I really wanted the book to remind us that we're on this much sort of longer journey, if I can use the overused words, into incorporating evidence into our decisions.

But the people I want to reach are perhaps science-interested people who might be struggling,

maybe, with the kind of overwhelming amounts of conflicting information and misinformation in the world, who I hope might be a bit more empowered, actually, by evidence after reading the book. Well, the subtitle of the book, if I may, is how evidence shows what really works. And you do cover a bunch of different topics. Obviously, we'll talk about a few of them today. What surprised me was that we live in a world where evidence-based decisions, that system is relatively new. There are a few examples from sort of antiquity onwards, but really

it's kind of a new thing. Yeah, and that was one of the huge surprises, I think, to me and maybe

another motivation in wanting to write the book. So I tell the story of the rise of evidence-based

medicine, which is perhaps the kind of pioneer, should we say, in this use of evidence in decisions.

Not so long ago, sort of 40s, 50s, we were in the world of em, should we say, in this use of evidence and decisions. Not so long

ago, sort of 40s, 50s, we were in the world of eminence-based medicine. And I tell the story in the

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