“There are very few analytical questions about mass human behavior which admit of being decided on economical premises alone. And those few are not the ones we are dealing with at this conference.”
“These experiments do not take place in a test-tube and they do not involve identical individuals. There is just a lot more going on than can possibly be controlled. And many of those things are not even economical at all.”
“The very rigor [or the lack of rigor] of social experiments limits the policy relevance of the results.”
References:
- Federal Reserve Bank of Boston (1986, September). Lessons from the Income Maintenance Experiments (Alicia H. Munnell, Editor). Retrieved from: https://www.bostonfed.org/economic/conf/conf30/conf30.pdf and https://www.bostonfed.org/economic/conf/conf30/conf30i.pdf
- Graham, Paul (2008, April). Be Good. Retrieved from: http://paulgraham.com/good.html