Is evidence-based public heath in crisis?

On the web page of British Medical Journal, the outpost ofevidence-based medicine (EBM) received 500 votes, of which 52 % agreed that ‘EBM is broken ’ (as of June 22). Readers did vote in relation to the article, published by a group of EBM promoters.1 In this article, Trisha Greenhalgh et al. listed for the ‘Evidence Based Medicine Renaissance Group ’ number of problems with the devel-opment of the EBM practice. Despite successfully addressing these problems, the article calls for the ‘Return to real evidence based medicine’. The call is addressed mostly to clinicians, but three points make it relevant for public health. (i) The move for evidence-based (i.e. science-based) decision-making is universal, and not limited to medical practice or even to the health-related fields. (ii) The classics of EBM explained the EBM origin as a move of the public health instruments, interpretation of the study design