The NYTimes posted this article about a randomized trial in New York City:
It has long been the standard practice in medical testing: Give drug treatment to one group while another, the control group, goes without.Now, New York City is applying the same methodology to assess one of its programs to prevent homelessness. Half of the test subjects — people who are behind on rent and in danger of being evicted — are being denied assistance from the program for two years, with researchers tracking them to see if they end up homeless.
Dean Karlan at Innovations for Policy Action responds:
It always amazes me when people think resources are unlimited. Why is "scarce resource" such a hard concept to understand?
I think two of the most important points here are that a) there weren't enough resources for everyone to get the services anyway, so they're just changing the decision-making process for who gets the service from first-come-first-served (presumably) to randomized, and b) studies like this can be ethical when there is reasonable doubt about whether a program actually helps or not. If it were firmly established that the program is beneficial, then it's unethical to test it, which is why you can't keep testing a proven drug against placebo.
However, this is good food for thought for those who are interested in doing randomized trials of development initiatives in other countries. It shows the impact (and reactions) from individuals to being treated as "test subjects" here in the US -- and why should we expect people in other countries to feel differently? That said, a lot of randomized trials don't get this sort of pushback. I'm not familiar with this program beyond what I read in this article, but it's possible that more could have been done to communicate the purpose of the trial to the community, activists, and the media.
There are some interesting questions raised in the IPA blog comments as well.