Grumpy, elusive creatures defending well-defined territory: evaluation in public policy 🦡

In 1997, Tony Blair’s government inherited a problem: tuberculosis in cattle was rising, farmers were furious, and nobody agreed on whether badgers were responsible. The solution was to commission a gold-standard randomised control trial — 30 sites across the southwest of England, three conditions, run by an independent scientific group. Proper science. No cutting corners.

Eleven years and £49 million later, the trial produced findings that made things more complicated, not less. Reactive culling of badgers made TB rates worse. Proactive culling helped inside cull zones but increased rates in surrounding areas. Two expert panels reviewed the same data and reached opposite conclusions. And by the time the final report landed, the minister who commissioned the review had left office, the department had been restructured, and the politics had moved somewhere else entirely.

This episode is the first in our three-part series on evaluation in government. It’s not an argument against evidence — it’s an argument for being honest about what evidence can and can’t deliver, and what happens when government treats a long-run trial as a substitute for judgment rather than an input into it.

Also: there are quite a lot of badgers.

Referenced in the show

• Angela Cassidy’s book — Vermin, Victims and Disease
• The New Yorker article on placebos in RCTs, The Power of Nothing by Michael Specter
• Australian Centre for Evaluation’s paper on RCTs

This podcast was recorded on Kaurna land, and we recognise Kaurna elders past and present. Always was, always will be.

Now for some appropriately bureaucratic disclaimers....

While we have tried to be as thorough in our research as busy full time jobs and lives allow, we definitely don’t guarantee that we’ve got all the details right.

Please feel free to email us corrections, episode suggestions, or anything else, at [email protected].

Thanks to PanPot audio for our intro and outro music.

'Til next time!