Yep! this is important. You can’t make everything evidence-based. Some empirical questions have to be decided by heuristic, by theory, by analogy, or sometimes “shrug, flip a coin.”
An important corollary is that “this isn’t evidence-based” isn’t always a damning insult. It’s good to know what is and isn’t evidence-based, but sometimes you have to make decisions without good empirical evidence.
Yep! this is important. You can’t make everything evidence-based. Some empirical questions have to be decided by heuristic, by theory, by analogy, or sometimes “shrug, flip a coin.”
An important corollary is that “this isn’t evidence-based” isn’t always a damning insult. It’s good to know what is and isn’t evidence-based, but sometimes you have to make decisions without good empirical evidence.