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，该研究调查外科医生、政策制定者和法官如何解释不确定的证据。这项研究的目标是帮助理解科学证据如何为政策制定提供信息。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，其中个别研究研究的综合方式据说有助于达成科学共识，但这样做会带来新形式的不确定性。对于外科医生来说，荟萃分析的一般结论可能很难与患者的个人需求相一致；对于政策制定者来说，荟萃分析可能支持在研究地点奏效但不符合其选民需求的干预措施；对于法官来说，荟萃分析可能与法院的对抗性程序和书面证据标准相冲突。通过对这三个案例的比较，本研究将有助于对这些行为者的组织约束、议程和价值观如何影响他们解释模糊证据的总体理解。这项研究的发现可能有助于改革各个领域的决策者在有争议的辩论中评估科学证据的方式。为了研究这些案件，研究人员将采访政策制定者和外科医生，并分析档案文件，如法庭笔录。混合方法的使用将允许理解社会和历史背景，在这种背景下，元分析成为这些领域中每一个领域的有用的、尽管令人担忧的证据形式。这个项目的学术价值在于，它提出了科学技术研究中的一个经典问题，即科学家及其受众如何管理认知不确定性，鉴于跨越三个不同领域的强大的新证据形式。这个奖项反映了NSF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.