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Realism, as a foundational philosophy and as an applied approach to inquiry, is increasingly visible in social science. Ray Pawson and Nick Tilley have provided an important service to the field of evaluation by applying some of the basic concepts of realism to frame an approach that they refer to as ‘realistic evaluation’. As they note, their contribution largely involves taking concepts of realism that are attracting attention in many social sciences and making them accessible to evaluators. We applaud them for their efforts, and look forward to their continued development and promotion of a realism-based view of evaluation.