How to achieve ‘external validity’

29 Jun, 2021 at 11:54 | Posted in Statistics & Econometrics | 2 Comments

Suman Ambwani on Twitter: "Also some very funny (and oddly specific) student-generated memes from the course...… "There is a lot of discussion in the literature on beginning with experiments and then going on to check “external validity”. But to imagine that there is a scientific way to achieve external validity is, for the most part, a delusion … RCTs do not in themselves tell us anything about the traits of populations in other places and at other times. Hence, no matter how large the population from which we draw our random samples is, because it is impossible to draw samples from tomorrow’s population and all policies we craft today are for use tomorrow, there is no “scientific” way to go from RCTs to policy. En route from evidence and experience to policy, we have to rely on intuition, common sense and judgement. It is evidence coupled with intuition and judgement that gives us knowledge. To deny any role to intuition is to fall into total nihilism.

Kaushik Basu

2 Comments

  1. Perhaps you are deluding yourself when you seek “non-ergodic proof”.
    The second sentence in the above extract from Kasu’s paper states that “to imagine that there is a scientific way to achieve external validity is, for the most part, a delusion”.
    A fuller answer is given in part 6 of the paper.

    Comment by Kingsley Lewis— 30 Jun, 2021 #

  2. Isn’t intuition just a story? If your intuition is that full employment is good, but mine is that jobs cause more harm than good, how can you non-ergodically prove it to me?

    Comment by rsm— 29 Jun, 2021 #


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