New York Times Article on Randomisation Designs for Housing Policy

An interesting article in the NYT covers a debate about the use of an RCT design to test the efficacy of homelessness prevention programme called HOMEBASE. Opponents of the design argue that it wasn't need given that the programme was already demonstrating efficacy and also that it is unethical to treat people like lab rats in this fashion. Proponents argue that the money is currently being spent without awareness of whether it is really having an effect and that, therefore, the use of the RCT design will be a powerful guide as to whether the programme should be continued and/or scaled up.

Secrets and lies: is a lot of medical research bunk?

Social scientists & certainly economists tend to look up to medical research, partly because its where the money is, and also because one of its key methods, the randomized control trial, is seen by many as providing a "gold standard" when it comes to measuring treatment effects - though Deaton, Heckman and others have questioned whether RCTs in economics should enjoy this privileged status.
The public generally tend to hold medical research in even higher respect. Medical researchers are good people, passionately if objectively, pushing back the frontiers of knowledge to help make us better.
So how worrying would it be if much medical research was actually wrong? This conclusion has been emerging from the work of a Greek medical researcher, John Ioannidis, and his team. The causes of this problem are various, including publication bias, and are well known but the scale of the problem is probably not. This article may make you distinctly uneasy.
Part of the problem, that key studies have not been replicated and may be wrong, is not peculiar to medicine. It may well plague the social and behavioural sciences too. This article on the subject won't make you feel any better.