Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Correspondence
  • Published:

Policy matters

Editorials should heed social scientists

Nature volume 511, page 292 (2014)Cite this article

Subjects

Your Editorials consistently recommend that policy decisions should be backed by sound science, including social science. However, my subjective analysis of a sample of these articles indicates that you do not always follow your own advice.

Roughly half of the 141 Editorials you published in the year from October 2012 relate to policy issues. Of these, only about 10% use literature citations to support their arguments. By contrast, 35% of the Editorials that express ideas with no direct bearing on policy are backed up by referencing.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of A Coruña, Spain

    Marcelino Fuentes

Authors
  1. Marcelino Fuentes
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marcelino Fuentes.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Fuentes, M. Editorials should heed social scientists. Nature 511, 292 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/511292a

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/511292a

Comments

Commenting on this article is now closed.

  1. Kenneth Pimple

    I appreciate Nature's editorials and commentaries and will continue to read them &#8211 but I also deeply appreciate this letter. From time to time I have wondered about the science behind Nature's policy comments, and I thank Marcelino Fuentes for taking the time to look into the issue and sharing his findings with us.

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing