Yes, but they do it nonetheless. If there was *one reform* I’d like to see with public spending it would be an unbiased and *BINDING* ROI analysis for every major spending decision that would force low ROI projects out of the loop. Savings from this? 50+% of all Govt spending.

Environmental Impact Statements are advocacy documents. There may be two sides but each side has advocates, not researchers.

A stadium’s value to a city? Rent Control? Growth Managment? A Public Referendum? … There won’t be any neutral scholarly researchers instead there will be advocacy groups with misleading names and distinct views to advocate under the guise of research. There may be no middle ground at all. The quality of the data is so poor that anyone basing later decisions on it is on slippery ground.

Somewhat ironically, the closer you get to research with high practical value the more problems you have with bias since the outcome affects the chance the researcher will get funded again or directly suits the agenda of the research group as with the radio study above.

Of course the responsibility for “fixing” this best rests with the users of the data, and until they become more discriminating about math we’ll continue to see worthless data held up as “interesting”.

Most ‘research’ is advocacy anyway and not true ‘research’. Sure those radio gimmicks of ’12th caller’ gives them data, the phone company equipment they lease counts the busy signals and they can show advertisers some impressive charts. Same with TV and ratings, though often its overly “massaged” data.