‘Evidence-based’ approach and RCTs: Can they distort policy-making?
Economist Jean Drèze joins us to discuss Randomised Control Trials (RCTs), their limitations, and the ways evidence-based approaches can go wrong.
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Show Notes
Evidence-based policy. Randomised Control Trials or RCTs. These are buzzwords in developmental policy these days. They have become almost synonymous with each other. The ‘evidence’ in ‘evidence-based’ has largely come to mean whatever data is produced by one method of research – RCTs.
But as some economists have been trying to tell us, RCTs have their limits. Regardless of whether it is RCTs, or some other research methodology, is it wise to let so-called ‘evidence’ be the sole arbiter of public policy? What are the ways in which ‘evidence-based’ approaches can go wrong, and how have RCTs ended up being misused, resulting in actual harm?
Guest: Professor Jean Drèze, Development Economist
Host: G Sampath
Recorded, edited, and produced by Jude Francis Weston
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