I and others are digging into Animal Charity Evaluators, diving deep on their research, to give them critical feedback and give other people an outside perspective. Before doing (most) research I’m recording my priors. My primary target is their fundamental research on leafleting.
I’ve already done a little bit of digging, so this isn’t totally unbiased.
ACE’s numbers on leafleting look unrealistically good, so I expect our investigations will push that number downwards. I expect they are not being pessimistic enough. I do expect them to be very open about their research.
I expect ACE to have been pretty thorough in most areas, but to have made some significant errors in some spots that we will find that make the leaflet effectiveness numbers go down. I worry that our modifications will make leafleting seem drastically less effective, but I guess it will just look somewhat less effective. I worry that we they will be reluctant to change things based on our feedback, but that’s not really based on anything.
Hymn to Reason 