So the proper way to do public policy is actually run interventions like clinical trials before allocating more funds. But this runs counter to political reality where politicians need to signal to constituents over realtively short time scales (2-4 years). In effect, the policy is the experiment.

It's unrealistic to run pilots, data collection, and followup in 4 years for many political decisions.

The best policy recommendation here is simply to enforce data collection for every decision. This would also incentivize politicans to only propose policies they truely believe will work.

Money will still be burned, but at the very least over long term our understanding will grow, and bad policies will gradually be disincentivized.