You’re right that we should be concerned with the quality of published evidence. I discounted psychotherapy’s effect by 17% for having a higher risk of effect inflation than cash transfers, see Appendix C of McGuire & Plant (2021). However, this was the first pass at a fundamental problem in science, and I recognize we could do better here.
We’re planning on revisiting this analysis and improving our methods – but we’re currently prioritizing finding new interventions more than improving our analyses of old ones. Unfortunately, we currently don’t have the research capacity to do both well!
Hi David,
You’re right that we should be concerned with the quality of published evidence. I discounted psychotherapy’s effect by 17% for having a higher risk of effect inflation than cash transfers, see Appendix C of McGuire & Plant (2021). However, this was the first pass at a fundamental problem in science, and I recognize we could do better here.
We’re planning on revisiting this analysis and improving our methods – but we’re currently prioritizing finding new interventions more than improving our analyses of old ones. Unfortunately, we currently don’t have the research capacity to do both well!