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Lumifer comments on The new GiveWell recommendations are out: here's a summary of the charities - Less Wrong Discussion

18 Post author: tog 01 December 2014 09:20PM

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Tags: givewell effective-altruism

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Comment author: Lumifer 04 December 2014 05:52:21PM *  1 point [-]

They do give a few examples of changing behaviour.

One -- which you quoted -- and which they offset by the immediately following paragraph which says (emphasis mine):

A study found that the proportion of people who were knowledgeable about the new recommendations increased significantly after the campaign, although it was unclear whether it was TV advertising or other elements of the campaign that made the difference (Hillsdon et al., 2001). However, there was no evidence that the campaign raised levels of physical activity.

Negative evidence is evidence, too.

Comment author: owencb 04 December 2014 07:15:01PM 0 points [-]

There are more examples on the following page (although they are all time series rather than controlled trials, the effect sizes are large enough that it is implausible that they all represent natural background shifts).

I certainly don't think that all public health campaigns are effective, or that awareness always translates into action. I just thought that your statements sounded surprisingly negative about the possibility of them being cost-effective.

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