Introduction: Evidence-based policymaking (EBPM) has become a widely embraced approach across fields such as medicine, education, and public policy. This trend responds to past policy failures where decisions were often grounded in weak or irrelevant considerations. Despite the centrality of evidence, some argue that ethics, i.e., ethical evidence (most broadly construed), is irrelevant to EBPM.
Findings: Arguments for “ethics-free” policymaking are motivated by concerns about relevance, objectivity, consensus, complexity, effectiveness, and analytical clarity. These arguments are too dismissive of ethical considerations in the sphere of evidence-based policymaking. However, there are also less pessimistic arguments that do not take ethics seriously in the domain of policymaking, i.e., the effectiveness argument and the separation argument.
None of the above arguments works. For example, although considering ethics makes things complicated, it would be a mistake to ignore real complexities. Similarly, although effectiveness in some ways is beyond the reach of ethics, it matters that the goals aimed at are properly picked.
Discussion: Even if policy exclusively relies on relevant evidence, it retains an intrinsic normative dimension. Emphasizing evidence is itself a normative claim: policymakers ought to base decisions on relevant facts rather than personal preference. The idea of being sensitive to reasons in forming beliefs is not a trivial matter. Furthermore, ethical considerations also guide how evidence is obtained and used. For instance, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are ethically sensitive forms of evidence-gathering. RCTs are valuable since we cannot directly run some experiments due to ethical limits on research.
Relevantly, there are epistemic and justice considerations about the sources we seek to gather evidence. Policies promoting diversity or inclusion rely on ethical reasoning to justify which perspectives are included in evidence collection (Fricker, 2007). Finally, engaging with evidence often raises normative questions, such as handling expert disagreement, conflicting societal beliefs, or biases revealed by “noise” studies (Kahneman et al., 2022; Eslami, 2023). Thus, normative considerations are unavoidable, underpinning both the selection and interpretation of evidence.
Furthermore, on another level, ethical considerations in EBPM are diverse. For example, policymaking must identify what is important and why. This includes, for example, questions about human well-being, non-human life, and environmental sustainability (Broome, 2010; Heathwood, 2021; Nussbaum, 2000). Similarly, policy possibly should account for collective values, such as equality, justice, and fairness
(e.g., Parfit, 1997).
In sum, insisting on eliminating ethics from evidence-based policymaking without further good arguments would count as the opposite of the very idea of evidence-based policymaking.