Social Policy Bonds blog: Ideology blights medicine, not just policymaking

25 March 2006

Ideology blights medicine, not just policymaking

If you think that medicine and publications such as The Lancet rise above ideology, read this post by Dr Mike Eades, and think again. Without going into detail, it appears that some doctors believe in low-fat diets and others believe in low-carb diets, and that these doctors' beliefs impede impartial scientific investigation. In medicine then, as in policymaking, ideology gets in the way of rational decision-making. Ideology should not drive medicine and it should not drive policymaking. Ideologues cannot help but distort facts and respond inadequately to events. Outcomes, not ideology, should drive policy.

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Social Policy Bonds in the media

13 June 2018: my short article Make Social Impact Bonds Tradeable, appears on the website of Alliance, a magazine for philanthropy and social investment.

25 May 2018: a short article on Social Policy Bonds and their possible application in India, appears on Market Express (India). It is by Dr Ashok V Desai and titled Incentivizing welfare.

9 October 2015: An article by Greg Bearup on the genesis of the Social Policy Bond idea, and application of a version of it in Australia appears in the Weekend Australian Magazine. (The article can also be downloaded as a pdf from here.)

October 2013: Professor Robert Shiller of Yale University, is named as one of the three winners of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Economics. His Nobel Prize lecture (pdf) delivered on 8 December, mentions Social Policy Bonds. Professor Shiller has for many years encouraged my work on Social Policy Bonds, beginning in late 1996 when he sent me this letter.

3 May 2012: An audio talk by Nobel Prize winner Professor Robert Shiller at the London School of Economics, in which Social Policy Bonds are briefly mentioned, is available here.

18 April 2012: Robert Shiller, Professor of Economics at Yale University, mentions Social Policy Bonds in his new book Finance and the Good Society. He also mentions the concept in a Huffington Post article. It's the eighth of his Ten Ways Finance Can Be a Force for Good in Society, and is also mentioned in a short profile piece about Professor Shiller.