So, there was the governor of neighboring Connecticut, mulling the idea of allowing the casinos in the state to serve booze 24 hours a day.

The theory was, of course, that the players would generate more taxable activity (that is, drinking and gambling) if they were allowed to imbibe at hours not available to the mere mortals outside the casino walls, who have to sober up and write newspaper columns and stuff.

But then, in the midst of the initial political negotiations, a Navy sailor who had been drinking at one of the casinos was involved in a car accident that killed a college student.

And thus, the governor’s extended hours idea disappeared faster than a shot of bourbon during Happy Hour. As a gubernatorial spokesman explained, the accident “does give us pause…”

It’s called government by anecdote. Would 24-hour bar hours lead to more serious accidents in and around the casinos? A handful of starving graduate students could have been commissioned to find out. But, no, the anecdote was enough.

And what is to be made of the slashing and burning coming out of the state budget proposals in Massachusetts? If emergency rental assistance is cut, as proposed, would the homeless be found wandering the mean streets? It makes no never mind. One ousted renter found dead would be sufficient anecdote to create an “emergency” and restore the funding.

Jobs Program

If the youth violence prevention programs disappear, as is proposed, would the cities experience a surge in crime that could be attributed to youth run amok? We don’t really know – and we don’t much care. The youth violence prevention programs employ a fair number of virtually unemployable folks, and we’re not about to use the budget crisis as a justification to evaluate whether the programs really make a difference.

As cranky Harvard economics professor Edward Glaeser, who directs the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, wrote last year: “Just because governments have more holistic objectives (than businesses) doesn’t mean that government shouldn’t weigh costs and benefits.”

And what better time to put those tools in place than during an economic slowdown, when programs will be reduced or dumped entirely – and government would have the experiment in place to determine whether the programs were effective – or whether they coasted along on anecdotal happy talk.

Government prefers murky, feel-good press conferences to research on actual effectiveness. The pre-school Head Start program has fought off research for years suggesting that the modest benefits disappear as the kids proceed through whatever nightmare school system has its way with them.

The D.A.R.E. anti-drug program has come under question for years as to whether, in fact, it influences the behavior of its school audiences.

Boston, for one, is unjustifiably proud of its “community policing” boondoggles, despite the reality that there are so many variables attached to increases or decreases in crime, no one actually knows whether the group-hug ethos works.

Former President William Clinton’s much-loved program to put an additional 100,000 cops on the streets seemingly had almost no impact on crime, according to the modest amount of research that was actually done on the program.

Gut Feeling

We resist rigorous research on many feel-good initiatives because they are designed to provide cheery press conferences for politicians, not to actually accomplish the stated objective. Remember the self-love from legislators across the country who banned the sale of soft drinks in elementary schools? A study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association found the bans had almost no impact on soda consumption by kids.

The general rule in public institutions is that as long as an existing program dutifully employs grateful people – and the performance is not embarrassingly awful – the status quo is virtually guaranteed. The University of Georgia finally got around to evaluating an alcohol education program it had inflicted on its students for 20 years. The results? Little difference in student drinking habits.

What a great “stimulus” it would be for, say, Massachusetts, to hire researchers to evaluate the impact of, perhaps, social service programs that are eliminated in the current budget crunch.

The key is not the good intention. As Henry David Thoreau once wrote: “It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are they industrious about?”