Why Randomness Could Be Key to Making Better Decisions
Introduction
In a world where decisions are often made based on expertise and judgment, the idea of relying on randomness can seem unsettling. However, there is a growing argument for the use of random allocation in various areas, from grant funding to medical treatments. This article explores the benefits of randomness in decision-making and the potential for learning and improvement that comes with it.
1. Challenging the Tradition
Traditionally, decisions involving grants or funding have been made based on careful assessment and selection. Donors would receive applications, review them thoroughly, and choose the most deserving recipients. However, an alternative approach has emerged: random allocation of grants. For example, the New Zealand Health Research Council and the British Academy have implemented lotteries to distribute grants. This approach brings efficiency and diversity to the selection process.
2. The Efficiency of Random Allocation
Large grant programs often require a substantial amount of time and resources to assess applications thoroughly. However, smaller grants may not justify the cost of a comprehensive evaluation. By allocating grants randomly, organizations like the British Academy can save both time and money. Instead of lengthy assessments, they can focus on providing quick, transparent, and impartial decisions.
3. Unlocking Diversity
Random allocation can also pave the way for greater diversity in grant recipients. With traditional selection processes, certain researchers or institutions may have an advantage, perpetuating existing inequities. However, under a random allocation system, individuals from ethnic minority backgrounds or lesser-known institutions are more likely to apply. This leads to a more diverse pool of recipients, ensuring a fair distribution of funding.
4. Learning from Randomness
Random allocation becomes particularly valuable when there is uncertainty about the effectiveness of an idea, policy, treatment, or procedure. Often, we rely on expert judgment only to discover that they may not have all the answers. Medical history provides many examples of doctors prescribing treatments that later turned out to be harmful. Randomized trials are necessary to assess the real impact of interventions and avoid unintended consequences.
5. Measuring Impact
The beauty of random allocation lies in its ability to compare the outcomes between those who received a particular intervention and those who did not. This enables researchers to measure the true impact of grants, treatments, or policies. For instance, evaluating the effect of receiving a grant on a researcher’s ability to publish, be cited, secure additional funding, or gain media coverage becomes feasible through random allocation.
6. Beyond Grants: Applicability of Randomization
Random allocation is not limited to grant funding alone. It can be a powerful tool for learning in various contexts. For example, analyzing prescribing behavior in healthcare or testing the impact of development grants on entrepreneurial success can provide valuable insights. Scarcity of resources and the desire for fairness make random allocation a compelling approach to convert limited resources into knowledge.
7. Embracing Randomness
Random allocation may seem unconventional and counterintuitive, but its potential to improve decision-making and foster learning makes it worth considering. Bridging the gap between tradition and randomness can lead to better outcomes in various domains. Embracing the use of lotteries and random allocation is a step toward a more efficient, diverse, and informed decision-making process.
Conclusion
Random allocation challenges the notion that decisions should predominantly depend on expertise and judgment. The use of lotteries and random allocation in grant funding and other contexts can enhance efficiency, promote diversity, and enable measurement of impact. Embracing randomness provides opportunities for learning and improvement that may otherwise go unnoticed. By exploring the potential of randomness, we can make better decisions and pave the way for a more equitable and insightful future.
Summary
In a world where decisions are often based on expertise, the idea of randomness can seem disturbing. However, the use of random allocation in grant funding and other contexts has gained traction. Random allocation brings efficiency, diversity, and measurement opportunities. It challenges the traditional approach and provides insights into the real impact of interventions. Embracing randomness opens doors to valuable learning and improvement.
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A little over a decade ago, Egypt’s Coptic Christians elected their new Pope. The names of three favorite candidates were placed in a glass container and then a blindfolded child was randomly selected from the trio. Religious people may appeal to the idea that the outcome was not truly random; God himself decided on Tawadros II. However, it is a seemingly disturbing way to approach a serious decision. In secular settings, randomness is usually reserved for games of chance and chance. The words “postcode lottery” are not said with joy. With the notable exception of jury service, we generally do not draw lots to assign duties, jobs, or privileges.
Maybe that’s a mistake. Why not (bear with me) allocate academic funds through lottery? Traditionally, a donor would have a large amount of money, invite applications, then sort through them all and award grants to the best ones. But an alternative is to implement a simple limit: every application that seems credible enough to be taken seriously goes to the bottom of the pot and grants are distributed randomly.
Ten years ago, the New Zealand Health Research Council began providing funding in this regard. Several other grant makers have followed suit, including the British Academy, which now awards around 500 grants each year through a lottery. One benefit of this approach is efficiency. British Academy grants are not large, £10,000 at most, and a thorough assessment could cost almost as much as the grant itself.
Another attraction is diversity. Hetan Shah, chief executive of the British Academy, is pleased to see more grants being awarded to ethnic minority researchers and researchers at institutions that had not previously received funding. This is partly because such researchers have been more willing to apply under the random process.
While a quick, transparent and impartial process is simpler, randomization can offer us much more than that. Whenever there is an idea, policy, treatment, or procedure of uncertain value, randomly giving it to some and not others is the ideal way to find out what its effects really are. Time and time again we have assumed that the experts’ judgment is sufficient, only to discover that the experts really didn’t know.
That is the lesson of medical history, where doctors would confidently prescribe a treatment that would be harmful. This was true in the time of bloodshed and remains true in the modern era. For example, antiarrhythmic drugs were widely used in the 1970s and 1980s in the belief that they calmed erratic heartbeats and therefore saved lives. That belief was not adequately tested until 1987, when a large five-year randomized trial began. He stopped halfway through when it became clear that while the medications did indeed stop errant heartbeats, they also had a tendency to stop regular heartbeats. According to Druin Burch taking the medicine, these drugs killed 50,000 people in the United States alone. A proper randomized trial was necessary to put an end to this well-intentioned but fatal error.
The stakes are lower at the British Academy and the variables that could be studied are less stark than the death rate. But the principle is the same: once you randomize something, you can compare recipients to those who didn’t receive it and start measuring the impact.
Philip Clarke, professor of health economics at the University of Oxford, was part of a team that evaluated the New Zealand grants and will also evaluate the new approach at the British Academy. He hopes to determine, for example, whether receiving a grant allows a researcher to stay in academia, publish more, be cited more by other researchers, get other grants, or get media coverage of their research.
Without randomization, all of these impacts are almost impossible to measure. Did being selected for a grant help you publish a widely cited article? Or was the grant itself irrelevant and you received it because you were the kind of person who publishes good work anyway? With randomization, the impact of grants can be measured. At least in principle.
We shouldn’t stop there. Randomization presents a golden opportunity to learn. And once you start looking for those opportunities, you see them everywhere. Not long ago, Ben Goldacre and his colleagues from the OpenPrescribing project analyzed the prescribing behavior of NHS clinics, finding out who was quickly following the latest prescribing guidelines and who was prescribing expensive or outdated treatments.
When Keith Ridge, then NHS chief pharmacist, saw the results, he asked for a list of the worst offenders and planned to reprimand each of them personally. Goldacre had another suggestion: conduct a randomized trial with Keith Ridge, giving him a random selection of the worst offenders to see if those reprimanded actually improved as a result.
I’ve written before about researchers using random assignment to study the impact of large business development grants awarded to Nigerian entrepreneurs, or small grants to small Sri Lankan businesses rebuilding after the terrible tsunami of 2004. Since there are a limited number of cash, and There are many deserving recipients, and since everyone can see the fairness of the draw, why not convert scarce resources into knowledge?
There may be a gap between the Coptic Pope and Keith Ridge, but there shouldn’t be a gap between using more lotteries… and learning from them.
Tim Harford’s new children’s book, “The Truth Detective” (Wren & Rook), is now available
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