I really enjoyed reading your HSS post and think you have some great points in there. I like how you take out some of the vague language of ‘intervening in complex systems’ that is often used to justify unsuccessful top down managerial changes in large organisations. Most complexity theory that I have come across would absolutely
I think the Mulago foundation article has some great points, such as trust and data not being mutually exclusive. Toby Lowe also has a great talk about this. But the article is also is too dismissive of applying non-quantitative funding e.g. to illiterate groups, or groups working on changing cultural values through art. I think the article is written to be clickbaity and controversial, which is a style I don’t find especially constructive.
I think the reason you disagree with point one might be that you are interpreting ‘complex systems’ still in the healthcare service provision field, whereas when it comes to health I would extend it to systems such as air pollution and income inequality, which are highly bound to complex political systems, where interventions are hard to measure using RCTs due to small sample sizes and a lack of counterfactuals. As has become my catch phrase, most disagreement is a result of miscommunication.
I really enjoyed reading your HSS post and think you have some great points in there. I like how you take out some of the vague language of ‘intervening in complex systems’ that is often used to justify unsuccessful top down managerial changes in large organisations. Most complexity theory that I have come across would absolutely
I think the Mulago foundation article has some great points, such as trust and data not being mutually exclusive. Toby Lowe also has a great talk about this. But the article is also is too dismissive of applying non-quantitative funding e.g. to illiterate groups, or groups working on changing cultural values through art. I think the article is written to be clickbaity and controversial, which is a style I don’t find especially constructive.
I think the reason you disagree with point one might be that you are interpreting ‘complex systems’ still in the healthcare service provision field, whereas when it comes to health I would extend it to systems such as air pollution and income inequality, which are highly bound to complex political systems, where interventions are hard to measure using RCTs due to small sample sizes and a lack of counterfactuals. As has become my catch phrase, most disagreement is a result of miscommunication.
Interested to hear your thoughts