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Outputs (10)

Understanding and misunderstanding randomized controlled trials (2017)
Journal Article
Deaton, A., & Cartwright, N. (2018). Understanding and misunderstanding randomized controlled trials. Social Science & Medicine, 210, 2-21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.12.005

Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) are increasingly popular in the social sciences, not only in medicine. We argue that the lay public, and sometimes researchers, put too much trust in RCTs over other methods of investigation. Contrary to frequent c... Read More about Understanding and misunderstanding randomized controlled trials.

Randomized Controlled Trials: How Can We Know “What Works”? (2017)
Journal Article
Cowen, N., Virk, B., Mascarenhan-Keyes, S., & Cartwright, N. (2017). Randomized Controlled Trials: How Can We Know “What Works”?. Critical Review, 29(3), 265-292. https://doi.org/10.1080/08913811.2017.1395223

“Evidence-based” methods, which most prominently include randomized controlled trials, have gained increasing purchase as the “gold standard” for assessing the effect of public policies. But the enthusiasm for evidence-based research overlooks questi... Read More about Randomized Controlled Trials: How Can We Know “What Works”?.

A Theory of Measurement (2017)
Book Chapter
Cartwright, N., Bradburn, N., & Fuller, J. (2017). A Theory of Measurement. In L. McClimans (Ed.), Measurement in medicine : philosophical essays on assessment and evaluation. Rowman & Littlefield

Causal Powers: Why Humeans Can't Even Be Instrumentalists (2017)
Book Chapter
Cartwright, N. (2017). Causal Powers: Why Humeans Can't Even Be Instrumentalists. In J. D. Jacobs (Ed.), Causal powers (9-23). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198796572.003.0002

Hume urged that there is no difference between the obtaining of a power and its exercise; others, that there is no difference between its exercise and the result that occurs. This chapter reinforces the reasons, based in the success of the analytic m... Read More about Causal Powers: Why Humeans Can't Even Be Instrumentalists.

What’s so special about empirical adequacy? (2017)
Journal Article
Bhakthavatsalam, S., & Cartwright, N. (2017). What’s so special about empirical adequacy?. European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 7(3), 445-465. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-017-0171-7

Empirical adequacy matters directly - as it does for antirealists - if we aim to get all or most of the observable facts right, or indirectly - as it does for realists - as a symptom that the claims we make about the theoretical facts are right. But... Read More about What’s so special about empirical adequacy?.

Predicting What Will Happen When You Intervene (2017)
Journal Article
Cartwright, N., Hardie, J., & Stringer, R. (2017). Predicting What Will Happen When You Intervene. Clinical Social Work Journal, 45(3), 270-279. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10615-016-0615-0

This paper offers some rules of thumb that practicing social workers can use for case studies that aim to construct, albeit not fully and never entirely reliably, models designed to help predict what will happen if they intervene in specific ways to... Read More about Predicting What Will Happen When You Intervene.

Big Systems Versus Stocky Tangles: It Can Matter to the Details (2017)
Journal Article
Cartwright, N. (2018). Big Systems Versus Stocky Tangles: It Can Matter to the Details. Erkenntnis, 83(1), 3-19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-016-9869-8

Wolfgang Spohn’s Frege prize lecture, like the work on which it is based, is a tour de force of rich, elegant, coherent argument about how the projected world that we experience is constructed. But we do not live in this projected world nor reason ab... Read More about Big Systems Versus Stocky Tangles: It Can Matter to the Details.