Hello, my organisation is looking for case studies of ineffective interventions (similar to PlayPumps). I have found tracking down these case studies a little tricky so far but I am sure that there are many similar programs that I am yet to stumble across. This is for an intro to EA text that we are writing for a Christian audience.
Do you have any suggestions that are ideally
- Implemented by charities
- Working in global health/poverty alleviation
- Ended up being harmful (or at least negligible impact) Bonus points for
- Well known/easily googleable
- Clearly well-intentioned and programme implemented successfully (lack of impact was not due to corruption or similar)
Examples so far that we have thought about
- Microcredit (not harmful, just less impact than expected by the global health community, but still a pretty good example)
- Tom's shoes (this is the most similar to what we are looking for, thanks to Jack Lewars for suggesting this)
- Guide dogs vs cataract surgery (not really a failure of a programme just a difference in priorities)
- Scared straight (not in global health/poverty alleviation)
If there is already a post like that please do link it below, I did have a quick look and expect that a list like that has been written somewhere already.
Thanks for your help!
DARE belongs in the same paragraph as Scared Straight, FWIW