Suddenly C is for supporting parents

19 January 2010 |

Ideas about character have been central to US developmental scientist Richard Lerner’s concept of positive youth development. Is “character education” now likely to find its way on to the policy agenda of a new UK government?

The less "unwitting" way to get results

17 January 2010 |

US researchers Dean Fixsen and Karen Blase recruit an old testament prophet, a civil rights activist and the founder of the Chicago Leadership Institute to the good cause of better implementation science.

Fox hunts big bad science in maze

10 December 2009 |

“Political orthodoxies and dogmas are hiding behind what ‘science says…’ The science might tell you the facts on climate change; it doesn’t mean that my local council can go round charging me for not recycling my rubbish.” The director of the UK Institute of Ideas highlights a modern confusion between evidence and justification.

Keeping truth and power in the family

1 December 2009 |

One day the eminent UK child psychiatrist Sir Michael Rutter urges policy makers to “focus on family conflict and the quality of family function – not on family structure,” and, the next, the Labour government publishes proposals to do precisely that. Was “speaking truth to power” ever more straightforward?

Who cares! It's just more proof of "social cycle theory"

21 October 2009 |

Is a sudden rise in UK care proceedings more evidence of the damage being done to the cause of prevention and child protection in the politically-manipulated aftermath of the Baby Peter case?

Meet Jasper Palmer – he’s positively deviant

25 September 2009 |

Why the things a Philadelphia hospital orderly kept doing with his contaminated hospital gowns and a pair of latex gloves might have important implications for prevention science and the advocates of program “fidelity”.