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Consequences of Evaluation for Evaluation

University of Colorado Boulder, ernie.house{at}colorado.edu

Drug studies are often cited as the best exemplars of evaluation design. However, many of these studies are seriously biased in favor of positive findings for the drugs evaluated, even to the point where dangerous effects are hidden. In spite of using randomized designs and double blinding, drug companies have found ways of producing the results they want, including manipulation of treatment, selection of sample, control of data, and calculated publication. Regulatory agencies have been neutralized. We have entered an era when evaluations are controlled by sponsors to produce the findings they want. Evaluations have become too important to be left to the evaluators. Such deceptive practices threaten the integrity of the evaluation field, perhaps its existence. There is no doubt these practices will spread into educational and social evaluation.

Key Words: drug evaluation • bias • politics • randomized trials

This version was published on December 1, 2008

American Journal of Evaluation, Vol. 29, No. 4, 416-426 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1098214008322640


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