• New York denying needy homeowners aid to actually see if they become homeless or not
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[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/nyregion/09placebo.html?hp[/url] [quote]It has long been the standard practice in medical testing: Give drug treatment to one group while another, the control group, goes without. Now, New York City is applying the same methodology to assess one of its programs to prevent homelessness. Half of the test subjects — people who are behind on rent and in danger of being evicted — are being denied assistance from the program for two years, with researchers tracking them to see if they end up homeless. The city’s Department of Homeless Services said the study was necessary to determine whether the $23 million program, called Homebase, helped the people for whom it was intended. Homebase, begun in 2004, offers job training, counseling services and emergency money to help people stay in their homes. But some public officials and legal aid groups have denounced the study as unethical and cruel, and have called on the city to stop the study and to grant help to all the test subjects who had been denied assistance. “They should immediately stop this experiment,” said the Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer. “The city shouldn’t be making guinea pigs out of its most vulnerable.” As controversial as the experiment has become, New York City is among a number of governments, philanthropies and research groups turning to so-called randomized controlled trials to evaluate social welfare programs. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development recently started an 18-month study in 10 cities and counties to track up to 3,000 families who land in homeless shelters. Families will be randomly assigned to programs that put them in homes, give them housing subsidies or allow them to stay in shelters. The goal, a HUD spokesman, Brian Sullivan, said, is to find out which approach most effectively ushered people into permanent homes. Such trials, while not new, are becoming especially popular in developing countries. In India, for example, researchers using a controlled trial found that installing cameras in classrooms reduced teacher absenteeism at rural schools. Children given deworming treatment in Kenya ended up having better attendance at school and growing taller. “It’s a very effective way to find out what works and what doesn’t,” said Esther Duflo, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has advanced the testing of social programs in the third world. “Everybody, every country, has a limited budget and wants to find out what programs are effective.” The New York study involves monitoring 400 households that sought Homebase help between June and August. Two hundred were given the program’s services, and 200 were not. Those denied help by Homebase were given the names of other agencies — among them H.R.A. Job Centers, Housing Court Answers and Eviction Intervention Services — from which they could seek assistance. Advocates for the homeless said they were puzzled about why the trial was necessary, since the city proclaimed the Homebase program as “highly successful” in the September 2010 Mayor’s Management Report, saying that over 90 percent of families that received help from Homebase did not end up in homeless shelters. One critic of the trial, Councilwoman Annabel Palma, is holding a General Welfare Committee hearing about the program on Thursday. “I don’t think homeless people in our time, or in any time, should be treated like lab rats,” Ms. Palma said. But Seth Diamond, commissioner of the Homeless Services Department, said that just because 90 percent of the families helped by Homebase stayed out of shelters did not mean it was Homebase that kept families in their homes. People who sought out Homebase might be resourceful to begin with, he said, and adept at patching together various means of housing help. The department, Mr. Diamond added, had to cut $20 million from its budget in November, and federal stimulus money for Homebase will end in July 2012. “This is about putting emotions aside,” he said. “When you’re making decisions about millions of dollars and thousands of people’s lives, you have to do this on data, and that is what this is about.” The department is paying $577,000 for the study, which is being administered by the City University of New York along with the research firm Abt Associates, based in Cambridge, Mass. The firm’s institutional review board concluded that the study was ethical for several reasons, said Mary Maguire, a spokeswoman for Abt: because it was not an entitlement, meaning it was not available to everyone; because it could not serve all of the people who applied for it; and because the control group had access to other services. The firm also believed, she said, that such tests offered the “most compelling evidence” about how well a program worked. Dennis P. Culhane, a professor of social welfare policy at the University of Pennsylvania, said the New York test was particularly valuable because there was widespread doubt about whether eviction-prevention programs really worked. [/quote] what fucking illogical dicks.
how can they even do this without the "test subjects" consent?
90% of those applied didn't become homeless? Well there's another waste of tax dollars
This is terribly unethical. Maybe if they provided some other sort of support, it'd be ok; like with cancer treatment testing.
Experimenting with live human subjects in distress is wrong no matter how you look at it
[QUOTE=Broseph_;26581933]90% of those applied didn't become homeless? Well there's another waste of tax dollars[/QUOTE] 90% that got accepted. If they didn't lose their home because of the support, then it's not a waste.
This is like a medical study, only instead of a generic brand of medication it's insulin.
What the fuck
Fuck New York. Bunch of yuppie cunts.
FOR SCIENCE! :science:
Indeed, about time the public sector stopped making half assed uninformed bullshit desicions and wasting money, see what works the way that works! Science! :D
[QUOTE=BmB;26582903]Indeed, about time the public sector stopped making half assed uninformed bullshit desicions and wasting money, see what works the way that works! Science! :D[/QUOTE] I see what you did here.
They actually test medicines against cancer, for example, just about the same way. One group gets the medicine, one other gets a fake, ( But in this case the doctors don't know wich one ) and then they test the results. If it works, it could be too late for the group that got the fake one so basically they're fucked.
[QUOTE=cheezey;26583175]They actually test medicines against cancer, for example, just about the same way. One group gets the medicine, one other gets a fake, ( But in this case the doctors don't know wich one ) and then they test the results. If it works, it could be too late for the group that got the fake one so basically they're fucked.[/QUOTE] Seeing how it's illegal and unethical to knowingly deny someone potentially life saving treatment in a study, I don't think so. P. sure they get chemo along with it
[QUOTE=cheezey;26583175]They actually test medicines against cancer, for example, just about the same way. One group gets the medicine, one other gets a fake, ( But in this case the doctors don't know wich one ) and then they test the results. If it works, it could be too late for the group that got the fake one so basically they're fucked.[/QUOTE] Except with cancer treatments, the test subjects are aware of what's going on. They're informed that they may get the experimental treatment or they might be given the placebo.
This is considered human experimentation, which is really illegal. Didn't stop us from watching nearly 400 people died of syphilis just to observe the effects way back when though. No government researcher has been prosecuted (unless Wikipedia needs an update, 2007) for experimentation so I assume nothing will be done.
[QUOTE=doggyalt;26583225]This is considered human experimentation, which is really illegal. Didn't stop us from watching nearly 400 people died of syphilis just to observe the effects way back when though. No government researcher has been prosecuted (unless Wikipedia needs an update, 2007) for experimentation so I assume nothing will be done.[/QUOTE] You mean the one where they intentionally infected prisoners and mental patients with it? Ah yeah, good times. We need [i]data[/i], people, it's for [i]science[/i]. Your tiny emotional brains would never understand.
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