ACE gave the public incorrect formulas for calculating Achievement Quality Scores, and by extension, Normalized Achievement Scores and Cost-Effectiveness Scores.
ACE chose to not reveal that these were the incorrect formulas until significant problems with their publicly disclosed formulas were raised.
Giving the public incorrect formulas isn’t just misleading, it’s making false claims. The formula for the circumference of a circle is C = 2 × π × r. If someone claims the formula is C = π × r, this is a false claim.
Additionally, the hidden evaluation criteria ACE has currently disclosed does not even fully address the 2 problems they denied. However, it is possible ACE has additional hidden evaluation criteria they could point to if anyone raised this issue. Unfortunately, there is no limit on how much alleged hidden information a charity could have, and it is impossible for us to determine if alleged hidden information is actually just fabricated evidence.
During the 90 days between ACE’s response to our critique and our Sinergia Review, zero people (other than ourselves) made a comment or a post pointing out any of these issues with ACE’s response. Instead, ACE’s response was upvoted, and we were criticized on our Sinergia Review for not pre-disclosing our critiques with charities. We suspect the criticism was harsher because ACE denied 2 of the problems in our first review as described above.
We would like to avoid these issues coming up again should Sinergia/ACE decide to respond. Thus, at this time we believe it is best to not disclose every problem we are currently aware of. This way if Sinergia/ACE wants to dispute anything on the basis of hidden evaluation criteria, it will have to properly address all of the undisclosed problems we are aware of. This makes it less likely for the excuse of hidden evaluation criteria to work.
Thank you for your feedback, Jason. We may do this in the future, but at this time believe it is best not to.
In the first review we published, ACE admitted to 4 of the problems we identified, and denied 2 of them. These 2 denials were based on the claim that ACE had hidden evaluation criteria that we did not consider in our analysis. ACE’s claim means:
ACE gave the public incorrect formulas for calculating Achievement Quality Scores, and by extension, Normalized Achievement Scores and Cost-Effectiveness Scores.
ACE chose to not reveal that these were the incorrect formulas until significant problems with their publicly disclosed formulas were raised.
Giving the public incorrect formulas isn’t just misleading, it’s making false claims. The formula for the circumference of a circle is C = 2 × π × r. If someone claims the formula is C = π × r, this is a false claim.
Additionally, the hidden evaluation criteria ACE has currently disclosed does not even fully address the 2 problems they denied. However, it is possible ACE has additional hidden evaluation criteria they could point to if anyone raised this issue. Unfortunately, there is no limit on how much alleged hidden information a charity could have, and it is impossible for us to determine if alleged hidden information is actually just fabricated evidence.
During the 90 days between ACE’s response to our critique and our Sinergia Review, zero people (other than ourselves) made a comment or a post pointing out any of these issues with ACE’s response. Instead, ACE’s response was upvoted, and we were criticized on our Sinergia Review for not pre-disclosing our critiques with charities. We suspect the criticism was harsher because ACE denied 2 of the problems in our first review as described above.
We would like to avoid these issues coming up again should Sinergia/ACE decide to respond. Thus, at this time we believe it is best to not disclose every problem we are currently aware of. This way if Sinergia/ACE wants to dispute anything on the basis of hidden evaluation criteria, it will have to properly address all of the undisclosed problems we are aware of. This makes it less likely for the excuse of hidden evaluation criteria to work.