Abstract
Although there is a social demand for scientific evidence of public investment, experience in areas other than healthcare are quite rare in Japan. However, in the United Kingdom and the United States of America, several activities of evidence-based practice in decision making for public policy are in existence, and these evidences are steadily increasing in number. These examples are: the Campbell Collaboration, What Works Clearinghouse of US Department of Education, and the Poverty Action Laboratory in the area of official development assistance. Taking into account such a background, an overview of the genealogy of the Evidence-based Medicine (EBM) and the Cochrane Collaboration as the precedent experience is reviewed in this paper. In addition, the role and the future direction of EBM with regard to the importance of accumulating quality information as a social infrastructure and social epistemology are discussed.
