by Of what use are RCTs? In her interesting Pufendorf lectures Nancy Cartwright presents a theory of evidence and explains why randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are not at all the “gold standard” that it has lately often been portrayed as. As yours truly has repeatedly argued on this blog (e.g. here and here), RCTs usually do not provide evidence that their results are exportable to other target systems. The almost religious belief with which its advocates portray it, cannot hide the fact that RCTs cannot be taken for granted to give generalizable results. That something works somewhere is no warranty for it to work for us or even that it works generally.
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Of what use are RCTs?
In her interesting Pufendorf lectures Nancy Cartwright presents a theory of evidence and explains why randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are not at all the “gold standard” that it has lately often been portrayed as. As yours truly has repeatedly argued on this blog (e.g. here and here), RCTs usually do not provide evidence that their results are exportable to other target systems. The almost religious belief with which its advocates portray it, cannot hide the fact that RCTs cannot be taken for granted to give generalizable results. That something works somewhere is no warranty for it to work for us or even that it works generally.