Without rigorous research and public investigations, the breakthrough that defines modernity, saves countless lives, and brings tremendous economic growth, will never happen. From discovering the laws of physics and the bacterial theory of diseases to formulating public policies, scholars use experiments to push society forward. Now, under the shadow of new variants of the new crown virus, it is difficult for society to restart travel, reopen schools and the workplace. This urgently requires social experimentation to ensure that we implement policies with a record of success.
In this way, we will build on a legendary tradition. In 1881, Hippolyte Rossignol, a famous French veterinarian who was skeptical of the bacterial theory of disease, challenged Louis Pasteur and asked him to verify him by vaccinating animals on a farm outside Paris hypothesis of. Pasteur had no choice but to accept open challenges, even though there had never been a vaccine tested outside the laboratory at that time.
On May 31 of that year, the two groups of animals that were vaccinated and not vaccinated were all injected with highly toxic anthrax. Two days later, a group of farmers, veterinarians, pharmacists and agricultural officials gathered at Rossignol’s farm to observe the results. Pasteur’s theory was confirmed: all vaccinated animals are alive, while unvaccinated animals are dead, dying, or in poor condition.
We are very grateful for these early experiments, which have a formal name: Randomized Controlled Trials (RCT). RCT helps scientists advance science and helps persuade others to believe in this science. Since 1963, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has required RCT-based evidence before allowing the commercial use of new drugs.
More than 140 years after Pasteur's experiment, the world waited with bated breath for the clinical trial results of the newly developed COVID-19 vaccine. After these randomized controlled trials are over, governments of various countries are busy approving new vaccines, and countries are competing for supplies, because people do not need to explicitly trust science and the reliable, transparent, and open experiments that are the basis of science.
But RCT is not limited to medicine. Since the middle of the 20th century, many social experiments have followed this process. One such experiment originated from a political debate over existing and alternative welfare programs—the "New Jersey Income Maintenance" experiment, which explored the effect of supplementary income programs on behavior, and produced insights that still affect public policy design. In recent years, the experimental methods adopted by economists—on the Internet, in companies, and in remote areas—have achieved many scientific breakthroughs, and they have won many Nobel Prizes.
The problem is that governments have been slow to follow up. So far, our own attempts to persuade policymakers to conduct large-scale social experiments have been disappointing. The main objections we hear are based on "fairness" arguments, which are essentially incompatible with the scientific concept of the "control group" (also called the "control group").
We are working with other economists in New York City to try to use scientific methods to explore the impact of fines, penalties, and deadlines related to driving and parking violations. The fixed response of city officials was this: “It’s unfair to charge people different fees at random.”
Similarly, when we launched the nursery program for underprivileged children in Chicago ten years ago, the school board, administrators, and the public opposed only The idea of providing services to some poor children. The purpose of the research is to determine what is the best practice for teaching cognitive and executive skills to help all poor children, but no one cares.
Recently, when we advised a foreign government on the economic response of the new crown, we encountered policy makers who strongly resisted the use of RCTs, even if they needed to answer life-and-death questions related to lockdowns, movement restrictions, and school reopening.
If there is no evidence to prove what is the most effective, the government can only conduct a de facto nationwide experiment and cannot obtain a suitable control at all. Policies based on weak evidence have been implemented in some countries and even globally, at a high cost.
Evidence obtained through formal experiments can save lives, especially when it is guided by theory and combined with other types of evidence. But for evidence-based policies to stand out, the authorities must finally realize that they cannot afford the cost of excluding the key evidence provided by social experiments.
