Randomized Control Trials - The Tarnished Gold Standard

Some blog followers might be interested in a recent post “Randomized Control Trials - The Tarnished Gold Standard” [Hake (2012a)]. The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: In response to “The Randomistas' War On Global Poverty - Erratum & Addendum” at http://bit.ly/YfMESg, Art Burke of the EvalTalk list pointed to an NYT piece “Applying Evidence to Social Programs” by Jon Baron at http://nyti.ms/Um9vVI.

Baron wrote (slightly edited): “Scientifically rigorous studies - particularly, the 'gold standard' of Randomized Controlled Trials (RCT’s) - are a mainstay of medicine, providing conclusive evidence of effectiveness for most major medical advances in recent history. In social spending, by contrast, such studies have only a toehold. Where they have been used, however, they have demonstrated the same ability to produce important, credible evidence about what works - and illuminated a path to major progress.”

In this post I cite arguments that the “gold standard” RCT studies may not be as lustrous as claimed by Baron:

(1) Ever since the pioneering work of Halloun & Hestenes (1985a) at http://bit.ly/fDdJHm, physicists have been engaged in social science of Physics Education Research (PER) that has made useful, reliable, and nonobvious predictions without resort to RCT’s - e.g. “Why Not Try a Scientific Approach to Science Education?” [Wieman (2007)] at http://bit.ly/anTMfF.

(2) In “A Response to ‘It's Not All About Class Size’ ” [Hake (2009)], I pointed out that according to the California Class Size Reduction Research Consortium [CCSRRC (2002)] at http://bit.ly/V923Ms, California's attempt to duplicate the vaunted Tennessee RCT study of reduced class size benefits results yielded no conclusive evidence of increased student achievement.

(3) In “A Summative Evaluation of RCT Methodology: & An Alternative Approach to Causal Research” [Scriven (2008] at http://bit.ly/93VcWD wrote: “In standard scientific usage, experiments are just carefully constrained explorations, and the RCT is simply a special case of these. To call the RCT the only ‘true experiment’ is part of an attempt at redefinition that distorts the original and continuing usage, and excludes experiments designed to test many simple hypotheses about - or simple efforts to find out - what happens if we do this.”

(4) In “Seventeen Statements by Gold-Standard Skeptics #2” [Hake (2010)] at http://bit.ly/TNpTR9 I cite, among others, the comments of the American Education Research Association; the American Evaluation Association; the National Education Association; the European Evaluation Society; Thomas Cook and Monique Payne, Hugh Burkhardt & Alan Schoenfeld; Margaret Eisenhart & Lisa Towne; Burke Johnson; Annette Lareau & Pamela Barnhouse; Joseph Maxwell; Dennis Phillips; Barbara Schneider, Martin Carnoy, Jeremy Kilpatrick, William Schmidt, & Richard Shavelson; Mack Shelley, Larry Yore, & Brian Hand; Deborah Stipek; and Carol Weiss.

(5) In "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False," John Ioannidis' (2005 at http://1.usa.gov/YxUxkL states ". . . . there is strong evidence that selective outcome reporting, with manipulation of the outcomes and analyses reported, is a common problem even for randomized trails [Chan et al. (2004)] at http://1.usa.gov/X8SB1T.

(6) the present signature quote of Thomas Cook and Monique Payne.
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To access the complete 18 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/VzVc0K.


Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Links to Articles: http://bit.ly/a6M5y0
Links to Socratic Dialogue Inducing (SDI) Labs: http://bit.ly/9nGd3M
Academia: http://bit.ly/a8ixxm
Blog: http://bit.ly/9yGsXh
GooglePlus: http://bit.ly/KwZ6mE
Twitter: http://bit.ly/juvd52

"In some quarters, particularly medical ones, the randomized experiment is considered the causal 'gold standard.' It is clearly not that in educational contexts, given the difficulties with implementing and maintaining randomly created groups, with the sometimes incomplete implementation of treatment particulars, with the borrowing of some treatment particulars by control group units, and with the limitations to external validity that often follow from how the random assignment is achieved."
- Thomas Cook and Monique Payne in "Evidence Matters" [Mosteller & Boruch (2002)]


REFERENCES [URL shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 04 Dec 2012.]
Hake, R.R. 2012a. "Randomized Control Trials - The Tarnished Gold Standard" online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/VzVc0K. Post of 4 Dec 2012 19:26:48-0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists.

Hake, R.R. 2012b. “The Randomistas' War On Global Poverty - ERRATUM & ADDENDUM,” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/YfMESg. Post of 30 Nov 2012 12:15:33-0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists, and are also on my blog “Hake'sEdStuff” at http://bit.ly/11c5w3e with a provision for comments.

Mosteller, F. & R. Boruch, eds. 2002. Evidence Matters: Randomized Trials in Education Research. Brookings Institution, publisher's information at http://bit.ly/UoX3sA. Amazon.com information at http://amzn.to/n6T0Uo. An expurgated Google book preview is online at http://bit.ly/RX1k3u.

The Randomistas’ War On Global Poverty (was Chocolate Makes You Smart)

Some blog followers might be interested in a recent post “The Randomistas’ War On Global Poverty (was Chocolate Makes You Smart)” [Hake (2012a)]. The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: In my post “Chocolate Makes You Smart!” [Hake (2012b)] at http://bit.ly/QheB7E, I wrote: “While awaiting Randomized Control Trials (RCT’s) in which the inhabitants of randomly selected countries are provided with placebos in place of chocolate. . . . .” In response Kevin Laws of the Physoc list pointed to: (a) a movement called the “Randomistas” led by MIT economist Esther Duflo http://bit.ly/TpiswJ, which holds that “RCT's are neither impossible nor immoral in the social sciences, but instead are required”; and (b) the fact that the Randomistas “have been responsible for resolving a number of long-standing philosophical debates with actual RCT data - the effectiveness of mosquito nets, for example.”

Although RCT’s may be the gold standard in medicine and global-poverty-reduction research by the Randomistas, they are certainly not that in education research generally - see e.g., (a) “Randomized Control Trials: The Strange Case of the Contradictory Graphs” [Hake (2012b)] at http://bit.ly/TQdfhX; (b) “A Response to ‘It's Not All About Class Size’ ” [Hake (2009)] at http://bit.ly/KBzuXV; and (c) the present signature quote. Nevertheless, RCT’s seem to have been used effectively in education research by the Randomistas according to information at http://bit.ly/TtTRae.

Despite the Randomista’s concern for education, there’s no indication that the “Center for Economic and Policy Research” (CEPR) http://bit.ly/U1DTSU, for which Duflo is a Program Director for Developmental Economics http://bit.ly/VgQ3y8, is aware of the overriding influence of poverty on the educational achievement of U.S. children, as emphasized in many references in the present post. This despite the fact that, according to information at http://bit.ly/U1DTSU, CEPR is concerned in part with “gaps in the social policy fabric of the U.S. economy.”
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To access the complete 21 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/V93tXl.

“In some quarters, particularly medical ones, the randomized experiment is considered the causal ‘gold standard.’ It is clearly not that in educational contexts, given the difficulties with implementing and maintaining randomly created groups, with the sometimes incomplete implementation of treatment particulars, with the borrowing of some treatment particulars by control group units, and with the limitations to external validity that often follow from how the random assignment is achieved.”
- Thomas Cook and Monique Payne in "Evidence Matters"
[Mosteller & Boruch (2002)]


Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Links to Articles: http://bit.ly/a6M5y0
Links to Socratic Dialogue Inducing (SDI) Labs: http://bit.ly/9nGd3M
Academia: http://bit.ly/a8ixxm
Blog: http://bit.ly/9yGsXh
GooglePlus: http://bit.ly/KwZ6mE
Twitter: http://bit.ly/juvd52

REFERENCES [URL’s shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 29 Nov 2012.]
Hake, R.R. 2012a. “The Randomistas’ War On Global Poverty (was Chocolate Makes You Smart)” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/V93tXl. Post of 29 Nov 2012 14:27:16-0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists.

Hake, R.R. 2012b. “Chocolate Makes You Smart!” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/QheB7E. Post of 24 Nov 2012 10:34:31-0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists and are also on my blog “Hake'sEdStuff” at http://bit.ly/10Nkcoa with a provision for comments.

Mosteller, F. & R. Boruch, eds. 2002. Evidence Matters: Randomized Trials in Education Research. Brookings Institution, publisher’s information at http://bit.ly/UoX3sA. Amazon.com information at http://amzn.to/n6T0Uo. An expurgated Google book preview is online at http://bit.ly/RX1k3u.