I'm currently hiring. Come and help me address the suffering of animals. At Rethink Priorities:
Senior Research Manager – To lead a new Animal Welfare Strategy Team. This team will focus on supporting and accelerating funders and organizations toward achieving accelerating the end of low-welfare farming. The team lead will have to manage a team to do consulting for animal organisations, in-house research projects, and coordinate the Animals Advocacy strategy Forum. Salary: $98,500–$125,000. Deadline: Monday 19 October.
https://careers.rethinkpriorities.org/en/postings/bc1c94f2-31d6-4e04-817c-ab1e7e6c26c9
(Senior) Neglected Animals Program Officer – Working to improve the welfare of terrestrial invertebrate, both farmed and wild. The role will be a mix of research and coordination and involve doing analysis, commissioning and overseeing external contractors, and coordinating with organizations working on shared problems. Salary: $79,000–$98,500. Deadline: Sunday 11 October.
https://careers.rethinkpriorities.org/postings/a7f585b8-7c7f-4748-b9eb-3d836ffc3683
We got an op ed published in a major Australian newspaper today in response to the recent wave of media about EA: https://www.afr.com/technology/trump-calls-effective-altruism-a-dangerous-ideology-it-s-not-20261007-p6135s
EA is (again) having a moment:
The usual suspects are in the trenches fighting the good fight, but this is a great time for EAs to take some comms action. An example I particularly loved was @Andres Jimenez Zorrilla 🔸 's post on LinkedIn and Twitter: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/andres-jimenez-zorrilla_im-a-longtime-effective-altruist-and-the-share-7512717228480413696-7Y_k/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAINuQ8BRM6_FTbj8vR-viYZrP0S2TPoUEg
This is the sort of collective action problem that EAs think is some other EA's responsibility and comms isn't our traditional strong suit, but I'd love to see more EAs in the arena here, posting about their experiences, posting their arguments, or talking to friends and family about why these ideas matter.
This comment section felt a bit brigaded here, which I don't love.
I'm sympathetic to debating strategic disagreements in the animal welfare movement, and appreciate you bringing these ideas up and pushing for what you believe is the right approach.
There were 2 things that stood out to me:
We need to go beyond Peter Singer’s utilitarian approach, which has had a limiting impact on campaigns giving preference to concerns about animal suffering and welfare reforms. What is needed are a deontological philosophy and a holistic, ecological systems approach.
I don't think utilitarianism gives a preference to welfare reforms — it's that welfare reforms have a strong track record of being effective, while these other approaches don't. Peter Singer himself wholeheartedly embraces animal liberation, literally! If the utilitarians thought that things beyond welfare reforms would work, and were cost-effective, they'd do them. It isn't because of their principled commitment to utilitarianism that they disagree.
Secondly, I think that many of the donors and EAs would stop being EA donors or EAs at all if deontology became the norm. At least speaking for myself, I am not aligned with EA because it is EA, but I'm aligned with EA because it is more aligned with my values (which are very utilitarian). I suspect this is true for many EA-motivated people. If EA changes, it doesn't mean the donors will change their values.
The campaign was inspired by: (1) the “AI Windfall” entering the animal movement
I think an important question for people who aren't excited about new funding entering the space going to welfare reforms is "why are these new donors are interested in funding animal welfare work at all?"
I think the answer is because cage-free campaigns, etc. demonstrated that helping animals at scale was possible, and because welfare-motivated advocates demonstrated that something could be done to help animals effectively.
No animal welfare advocate controls where these donors give — if the movement today decided to pivot to plant-based advocacy and stop doing welfare stuff, it's plausible significantly less money would be donated to helping animals. There isn't a pot of unlimited money controlled by animal advocates — there are donors who have specific values and priorities, and organizations who will make the case to those donors that their work should be funded. The pitch should be to the donors (who actually will decide these things), not to EA as a whole, and has to overcome the fact that you're pitching against the thing that might have gotten many of them excited about animal advocacy in the first place.
>I made a 13x13" hole in my wall
I was away for the day and when I got home, he said "I made a hole in our wall but it can be refilled."
Hey this is super cool!
I think this could be a great intervention, but I disagree on the RCT front. I strongly believe that in the medium to long-term, this intervention should, and will only go to scale after high quality RCTs.
Yours and RP's reasons for not doing it aren't compelling to me. I'm almost a bit confused.. This might actually be one of the easier RCTs to do in the development world. If I was a funder, I would be asking why you aren't in the middle of a big RCT at the moment, or at least why you aren't getting started on one. I agree with the funders.
"Funders often tell us to come back with an RCT, which we estimate would need around 72 hospitals across three countries, US$5 million and three to four years." If this is what's needed, then yeah do it. You can get the 5 million - have you asked GiveWell? But I'm skeptical you really need 72 hospitals. Mortality rates are high enough in massive hospitals I would imagine if you are in national referral hospitals in capital cities, or similar, then this number would drastically drop. Maybe you are considering a bunch of smaller hospitals?
From your article
"conventional RCT is hard to run for this intervention. It can't be blinded, because health workers know when monitors are on the ward. It has to randomise whole hospitals, because the central patient overview and the positive impact on workload affects care for every child on the ward, not only those attached to a monitor. Death is a relatively rare outcome, and baseline neonatal mortality across our sites ranges from 4.3% to 27.8%, which makes a trial harder to power. Ministries are also reluctant to keep hospitals in a control arm for years while neighbouring hospitals have monitoring. So is an RCT needed before scaling? If the effect is real, waiting three to four years for trial results means children in hospitals that could have had monitoring go without it. Last but not least it is important to emphasize that continuous monitoring is already considered standard of care in most parts of the world, so perhaps it is less about if it works but rather to what extent it should be prioritized amidst many other priorities and gaps.
From RP
"Note that a traditional randomized controlled trial may be genuinely hard to run in this context: a monitoring system cannot be disguised as a placebo, and it may change how the whole ward operates. For example, staff know when the monitors are present, and the intervention is bundled with training and supervision. The observed effect size therefore reflects both the device plus the attention surrounding it (i.e., the Hawthorne effect[5]),
1. Your current evidence is fairly weak, and low on the evidence ladder. Before and after studies are notorious for being unreliable because there are so many other factors involved. Hospitals are always improving their systems and there are many reasons why mortality could drop. Seeing consistency between studies is encouraging but evidence needs to be better.
2. Blinding is not very important - the staff seeing the monitors is part of the intervention no? I'm not sure why RP and you think this is a problem? If it changes how the whole ward operates that is part of the benefit of the intervention. In fact that might be where you main benefit is! I'm confused about this comment by RP here and not sure what point they are making.... The training and supervision front could be a big deal though, especially when you believe your main impact to be ward spillovers. That's why I think training and supervision can't really last more than a few months, then you need to largely leave the hospital be with the monitors with minimal supervision and see if mortality reductions are sustained over 2-3 years. This isn't that long an RCT!
4. Randomising whole hospitals isn't an ethical issue. Ministries will not refuse to allow hospitals being in a control arm (they are getting free monitors) and the evidence isn't nearly good enough yet to argue an RCT is unethical. If the difference in mortality between hospitals is big after year 2 say, the study will be triggered to stop for ethical reasons anyway.
5. The range of mortality rates doesn't make powering a study harder I don't think? (might be missing something) Its low mortality rates and low sample sizes that might be the issue here. But there are lots of hospitals where multiple kids die every week (I have one 500 meters from my home) If you are in the busiest hospitals where 150+ kids die every year, then I would think you wouldn't need neadly that amount (I might Claude this later). If you need to do a multi-country RCT so be it, that seems likely needed.
6. The urgency argument seems unrealistic. Because of the low level of evidence intervention isn't "obviously" better than other things we could spend money on. I don't think your case is nearly strong enough here to make a "bypass the RCT" argument. I think actually even framing it like this could make people lose confidence in the intervention. It feels more like a sales pitch than a good argument.
7. What is considered "Standard of care" in rich countries is close irrelevant in healthcare interventions in low-income countries. I don't think it should even be a factor really. There are 100 "standard of care" things you could introduce to a pediatric ward in Malawi (Better antibiotics, Dr. nos, nursing ratios, frequency checks, infection control, blood cultures, blood gases etc.). This doesn't mean you don't study their benefit in a low-income setting.
As an unrelated point, I feel like the presentation of the intervention here might be too branded. The intervention is a monitoring device, yet you are at pain to emphasise how your intervention is different from other devices. If your plan is to scale through government, its the monitoring system that matters not the branding. It might be better even to brand machines as "Ministry of Health" machines and think of yourself as a support org as much as an innovation org? This is a tricky one though I know.
I absoutely love this intervention - I'd be keen to get on a call and chat about it even if you might be. Sadly someone ffrom your org was pegged to meet me at EAG New York, but I can't go because of travel restrictions due to ebola :(