I agree that having a good control group would be very important. I also agree that for many charitable activities this would be impossible. However, in many other activities, it would be possible. A good number of randomized controlled trials are being run to measure the effectiveness of health, educational and even political/governance activities, so they can be done. They might be costly, but that’s a separate question, and, as I said, there could be very large benefits in improved knowledge from doing them.
I think your scam analogy is somewhat off-target. A closer analogy would be that, for donations at the moment, they ask you to send $50 and don’t offer any refund if your child is rejected. You just have to trust them, or examine them closely enough, to be confident they are doing something effective. A payment for results arrangement with a badly constructed control group might be like your analogy, but even this might be some sort of improvement, because there is now at least an incentive to reduce the number of rejections, even if some of the money is going for things that would have happened anyway. And, with a good control group, you would only be paying for things you could be confident were the results of the charity’s activity.
I agree that having a good control group would be very important. I also agree that for many charitable activities this would be impossible. However, in many other activities, it would be possible. A good number of randomized controlled trials are being run to measure the effectiveness of health, educational and even political/governance activities, so they can be done. They might be costly, but that’s a separate question, and, as I said, there could be very large benefits in improved knowledge from doing them.
I think your scam analogy is somewhat off-target. A closer analogy would be that, for donations at the moment, they ask you to send $50 and don’t offer any refund if your child is rejected. You just have to trust them, or examine them closely enough, to be confident they are doing something effective. A payment for results arrangement with a badly constructed control group might be like your analogy, but even this might be some sort of improvement, because there is now at least an incentive to reduce the number of rejections, even if some of the money is going for things that would have happened anyway. And, with a good control group, you would only be paying for things you could be confident were the results of the charity’s activity.