The ‘causal wars’ (Scriven 2008) are controversies currently plaguing a variety of fields of the applied social and life sciences including ageing studies, criminology, dentistry, development economics, education, medicine, psychology and social policy, among others. The main issue in these controversies is the role randomised controlled trials (RCTs) ought to play in the evaluation of treatment and policy options. Some, e.g., proponents of ‘evidence-based medicine’ argue that evidence from RCTs is the gold standard. Their opponents deny RCTs any special role in the evaluation of treatments. But whereas defenders of RCTs can be said to follow an epistemic paradigm (‘experimentalism’), their opponents make many detailed criticism, but have so far not developed a unified alternative. To present such an alternative is the aim of this paper.