In ‘Probing for proof, plausibility, principle and possibility’, the authors propose a new approach to how academics and practitioners of international development assess evidence during systemic evidence reviews.

The article draws lessons from systemic evidence reviews across the social sciences and identifies how the method’s limiting perspective on evidence may have serious disadvantages in the application of such evidence for development policy.

In doing so, the authors provide an alternative framework that the international development community can use to assess evidence without generating the negative outcomes on policy relevance that current applications of systemic evidence reviews have shown to contribute to.