We should publish the cost of each piece of research

Recently I reviewed an imaginative proposal for an $A80m funding programme to prevent chronic disease in the community. It had all the right ideas and components: good evidence for the interventions suggested and encouragement of local decision makers and partners to foster adaptation to context and sustainability. What was the evaluation budget? Ten per cent: it’s always 10%, isn’t it? That is the magic figure that seems to have been passed down through the ages to determine whether or not policies and programmes reach people and whether they work.

The week before, I had reviewed a multimillion dollar protocol for a cluster randomised controlled trial of a health promotion intervention in schools. The evaluation to intervention budget ratio was five to one—almost the reverse. There are no prizes for guessing that the first proposal came from a government agency and the second from a health research agency. Yet the results produced by both are …