Evidentiary standards. We drew on a large number of RCTs for our systematic reviews and meta-analyses of cash transfers and psychotherapy (42 and 74, respectively). If one holds that the evidence for something as well-studied as psychotherapy is too weak to justify any recommendations, charity evaluators could recommend very little.
A comparatively minor point, but it doesn’t seem to me that the claims in Greg’s post [more] are meaningfully weakened by whether or not psychotherapy is well-studied (as measured by how many RCTs HLI has found on it, noting that you already push back on some object level disagreement on study quality in point 1, which feels more directly relevant).
It also seems pretty unlikely to be true that psychotherapy being well studied necessarily means that StrongMinds is a cost-effective intervention comparable to current OP / GW funding bars (which is one main point of contention), or that charity evaluators need 74+ RCTs in an area before recommending a charity. Is the implicit claim being made here is that the evidence for StrongMinds being a top charity is stronger than that of AMF, which is (AFAIK) based on less than 74 RCTs?[1]
A comparatively minor point, but it doesn’t seem to me that the claims in Greg’s post [more] are meaningfully weakened by whether or not psychotherapy is well-studied (as measured by how many RCTs HLI has found on it, noting that you already push back on some object level disagreement on study quality in point 1, which feels more directly relevant).
It also seems pretty unlikely to be true that psychotherapy being well studied necessarily means that StrongMinds is a cost-effective intervention comparable to current OP / GW funding bars (which is one main point of contention), or that charity evaluators need 74+ RCTs in an area before recommending a charity. Is the implicit claim being made here is that the evidence for StrongMinds being a top charity is stronger than that of AMF, which is (AFAIK) based on less than 74 RCTs?[1]
GiveWell, Cochrane