I think Bryan Caplan is directionally correct, but his argumentation in this post is incredibly sloppy.
A marxist communist could make the exact same complaint as Bryan Caplan, but with the signs flipped. Why do all these economists focus on RCTs for educational interventions, and never once consider the best educational intervention is to rise up in violent revolution and overthrow our capitalist oppressors?
I don’t recall any of the RCT papers I’ve read being particularly heavy on normative claims. Usually they’ll just say:
“this intervention had a measurable effect on X, so policy makers interested in improving X should consider it part of the tool kit”
or
“this intervention didn’t have an effect on X, so policy makers interested in improving X should not do this”
Which seems completely reasonable to me. They aren’t quietly rejecting the question, they largely are just not engaging with normative questions of what policy makers ought to do. RCTs are a way of taking out ideology and focus on strictly empirical questions.
I think Bryan Caplan is directionally correct, but his argumentation in this post is incredibly sloppy.
A marxist communist could make the exact same complaint as Bryan Caplan, but with the signs flipped. Why do all these economists focus on RCTs for educational interventions, and never once consider the best educational intervention is to rise up in violent revolution and overthrow our capitalist oppressors?
I don’t recall any of the RCT papers I’ve read being particularly heavy on normative claims. Usually they’ll just say:
“this intervention had a measurable effect on X, so policy makers interested in improving X should consider it part of the tool kit”
or
“this intervention didn’t have an effect on X, so policy makers interested in improving X should not do this”
Which seems completely reasonable to me. They aren’t quietly rejecting the question, they largely are just not engaging with normative questions of what policy makers ought to do. RCTs are a way of taking out ideology and focus on strictly empirical questions.