Thinking out of the black box. A 3ie-LIDC Symposium
Date: 17:30 to 19:30 Monday, May 23rd 2011
Venue: John Snow Lecture Theatre, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) Keppel Street, London, WC1E 7HT
Professor Nancy Cartwright, Professor of Philosophy, London School of Economics
Professor Howard White, Executive Director, 3ie
Chair: Professor Jeff Waage, Director, LIDC
Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) have moved to the forefront of the development agenda to assess development results and the impact of development programs. In words of Esther Duflo – one of the strongest advocates of RCTs – RCTs allow us to know which development efforts help and which cause harm.
But RCTs are not without their critics, with questions raised about their usefulness, both to provide more substantive lessons about the program being evaluated and whether the findings can be generalized to other settings.
This symposium brings perspectives from the philosophy of science, and a mixed method approach to impact analysis, to this debate.
ALL WELCOME
For more information contact: 3ieuk@3ieimpact.org
PS1: Nancy Cartwright wrote “Are RCTs the Gold Standard?” in 2007
PS2: The presentation by Howard White is now available here – http://tinyurl.com/3dwlqwn but without audio