Totally agree that Esther Duflo is fantastic and that the contributions of these people go beyond just RCTs, e.g. Esther Duflo's work on the returns of education in Indonesia.
https://www.edx.org/bio/esther-duflo
Amazing I can type that. The net ain't all bad.
Do astrophysicists use controlled trials to study the universe?
As a generous guess at most 40 of these models are wrong, since they all describe basically the same few events with vastly different mechanisms. I guess that majority of interesting but wrong models is what you are after?
As for trials, the universe itself has provided billions upon billions of different objects to perform measurements on.
It doesn't have much to do with theory building at all, as most theory involving QM doesn't need to concern itself with exactly why QM works despite its strange philosophical meaning.
But that aside, what I find disturbing is the economic couching of basic human questions: do you need economic long-term effects that can be proven to provide deworming to poor children? Is that what we have arrived at - wellbeing is not even a concern. A fictional economic greater good is the measure of success, the health and comfort of poor people is not?
I'd say there is really a need for soul-searching among economists - to rethink why capitalism has brought so much property but also leaves so many people in poverty, and why it has taken such radical forms that in the richest country on earth thousands starve and tens of thousands die of treatable medical issues - and millions more in a global view.
Those who want to make practical improvements quickly with those limited funds available (from developing country governments, foreign aid, charity, etc.) need to make effective use of those funds. I don't think it is a stretch to say it is a moral obligation to make sure those funds are put to good use.
Doing RCTs is quite key to identifying the most effective approaches whether the goal is lives saved/$, incremental years of education/$, malaria cases reduced/$, etc. With that data, you can direct funds to the most efficient cause in any given area.
Duflo & Banerjee are quite modest about any judgement on whether the focus should be on improving quantity or quality of life and how one should measure quality of life. Their books are quite clear that one's one view of preferences doesn't necessarily line up with those who you are trying to help.
And one last point, yes, of course, their work would go through ethics review panels. Basically anything with human subjects does and their work would obviously qualify.
The article seems to motivate criticism of RCTs in only the barest manner: "what of external validity?" No shit, Sherlock, which is why the credibility revolution also argues for frequent and cross-contextual replications. "RCTs present ethical quandaries in re denying the control group the benefits of a presumed good intervention". Again, duh. The problem is these presumed good interventions often aren't which is why the most resounding impact of RCTs is not proving treatments successful beyond our wildest dreams, but rather finding a series of disappointing and in some cases devastating null effects. Bringing up deworming is especially rich in light of the serious concerns raised by deworming RCTs about the value and effect.
It is also weird to talk about the credibility term solely or entirely in terms of RCTs. As economists often say RCTs are the gold standard, but there exist many silver standards and causal inference writ large and a broader concern with well identified pseudo-experimental or observational work has also developed thanks to the same forces and same people credited here.
Thank god for Esther Duflo. Oh, and her husband is a half decent economist too, I guess.