Interdisciplinary Systematic Review: mechanistic evidence and epistemic justice

Goal

The goal of this project is to develop a new approach to evidence review: Interdisciplinary Systematic Review (ISR). ISR will provide a way to integrate mechanistic evidence from across disciplines, alongside the studies that are the focus of orthodox systematic reviews. Background

Synthesising research evidence is key to evaluating the effectiveness of interventions and to developing policy. The dominant approach in medical disciplines, championed by the Evidence-Based Medicine movement and Cochrane, appeals to an explicit evidence hierarchy in which randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are seen as having inherent advantages over other forms of evidence.

Other disciplines and fields have begun to emulate this approach, producing 'evidence-based education', 'evidence-based management', 'evidence-based policing' and more. But the RCT design has significant weaknesses if used in the absence of mechanistic evidence—evidence about the causal mechanisms by which interventions produce effects. The assumption that RCT evidence can stand alone led to untrustworthy conclusions about the efficacy of masks during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The lead applicant, a philosopher, has already published a preliminary outline of how mechanistic evidence might be combined at a philosophical level with RCT evidence. This project seeks to take that work forward with a team of experts drawn from multiple disciplines (including medicine, law, policy, statistics), using a review of the effectiveness of face masks as a worked example.

Research questions

How can mechanistic evidence be systematically and rigorously combined with RCTs and other designs to produce a more interdisciplinary and robust evidence base for evaluating intervention efficacy? What are the strengths and limitations of this new approach ('Interdisciplinary Systematic Review', ISR) compared with other mechanism-sensitive (theory-based) review methods such as realist or metanarrative review?

Study design

Interdisciplinary desk research to develop and apply a novel systematic review methodology, combining insights from analytic philosophy, Bayesian statistics and theory-based systematic review.