Doctoral Dissertation Research: Managing the mixed messages of meta-analysis: How surgeons, policy makers, and judges cope with uncertainty

这项博士论文研究改进奖支持一项研究，该研究考察了外科医生、政策制定者和法官如何解释不确定的证据。这项研究的目的是促进对科学证据如何为决策提供信息的理解。这项研究的重点是荟萃分析，这是一种越来越权威的证据形式，其中个人研究以一种据称促进科学共识的方式进行综合，但这样做会引入新的不确定性形式。对于外科医生来说，荟萃分析的一般结论可能难以与患者的个体需求相协调；对于政策制定者来说，荟萃分析可能会支持一种干预措施，这种干预措施在研究地点起作用，但与他们的选民的需求不相容；对法官来说，元分析可能与法院的对抗性程序和书面证据标准相冲突。通过比较这三个案例，本研究将有助于对这些参与者的组织约束、议程和价值观如何影响他们如何解释模棱两可的证据有一个大致的了解。本研究的发现可能有助于改革决策者在有争议的辩论中评估科学证据的方式。为了研究这些案例，研究人员将采访政策制定者和外科医生，并分析档案文件，如法庭记录。混合方法的使用将允许对社会和历史背景的理解，在这些背景下，元分析成为这些领域中有用的证据形式，如果令人担忧的话。这个项目的智力价值在于，它提出了科学和技术研究中的一个经典问题，即科学家和他们的受众如何在三个异质领域强有力的新证据形式的指导下管理认知的不确定性。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This doctoral dissertation research improvement award supports a study that examines how surgeons, policy makers, and judges interpret uncertain evidence. The goal of the study is to contribute to an understanding of how scientific evidence informs policymaking. The study focuses on meta-analysis, an increasingly authoritative form of evidence in which individual research studies are synthesized in a way that is said to facilitate scientific consensus but in doing so introduces new forms of uncertainty. For surgeons, the general conclusions of meta-analysis may be difficult to reconcile with the individual needs of patients; for policy makers, meta-analysis may back an intervention that worked at the sites where it was studied but is not compatible with the needs of their constituents; and for judges, meta-analysis may conflict with the court's adversarial process and written standards of evidence. By comparing these three cases, this research will contribute to a general understanding of how the organizational constraints, agendas, and values of these actors impacts how they interpret ambiguous evidence. The findings of this research may contribute to reforms in the way that decision makers in various domains evaluate scientific evidence in contentious debates.To study these cases, the researcher will interview policy makers and surgeons, and analyze archival documents, such as court transcripts. The use of mixed methods will permit an understanding of the social and historical context in which meta-analysis becomes a useful, if fraught, form of evidence in each of these domains. The intellectual merit of this project is that it takes up a classic question in science and technology studies, how scientists and their audiences manage epistemic uncertainty, in the light of a powerful new form of evidence across three heterogenous domains.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.