Social Policy Bonds blog: Killing for profit

12 April 2018

Killing for profit

Dr Jason Fung concludes his concise post about the corruption of Evidence Based Medicine thus:

So here’s a damning list of all the problems of EBM

Selective Publication

Rigged outcomes

Advertorials

Reprint Revenues

Bribery of Journal Editors

Publication Bias

Financial Conflicts of Interests

Killing for profit, Jason Fung, 12 April

My comment, after thanking Dr Fung for his post, was short: I think we need to re-orientate the incentives away from activities, publications, and other surrogate indicators, and focus entirely on outcomes that are meaningful to ordinary people: longevity, infant mortality, Disability Adjusted Life Years etc. In the abstract, this sounds difficult, but my suggestion of a new financial instrument could help.

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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.