English Current debates about the relationship between research evidence and policy involve methodological issues relating to procedures for generating reliable research findings. This article focuses on the role of randomised controlled trials (RCTs), and the education sector in the UK as a case study. It describes ‘resistance’ positions with respect to the contribution RCTs can make to public policy and practice evidence, analyses key features of ‘resistance’ texts, and argues that these are best understood sociologically as ideological statements, and as conservative responses to the real or imagined threat of ‘new’ technology, including its ability to reveal previously unchallenged problems in, and with, academic work.
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Ann Oakley (2006) studied this question.