Alice Evans

It says, ignoring in Goodhart's law that any observed statistical regularity

will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.

Goodhart's law was actually a rather joking side comment.

It was not intended at that time.

to be taken all that seriously.

That's correct.

The point is really fairly simple.

Let's say that

One of the measures of a hospital is that the waiting time is kept short.

Indeed.

And they will do it by reallocating resources to achieve that one measure and fail to meet non-targeted measures because the resources will have been allocated away from them.

Well, I'm perfectly happy with them.

All publicity is good.

That's right.

But in some ways, it's a bit disappointing that I'm probably best known for what is a jocular comment.

After some 60 years of doing more...

considered academic detailed work for which I am less known.

Indeed, thank you so much.

Indeed, thank you so much.

Okay, so fertility is collapsing everywhere all at once, perhaps with the exception of sub-Saharan Africa, where rates are still very high. But across Latin America, the Middle East, North Africa, all those trends are going sharply downwards. And