Benjamin Todd

Some attempts to do good, like Scared Straight, make things worse.

Many more fail to have an impact.

David Anderson of the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy estimates...

Of social programs that have been rigorously evaluated, most, perhaps 75% or more, including those backed by expert opinion and less rigorous studies, turn out to produce small or no effects, and in some cases negative effects.

This suggests that if you choose a charity to get involved in without looking at the evidence, you will most likely have no impact at all.

Worse, it's very hard to tell which programs are going to be effective ahead of time.

Don't believe us?

Try our 10-question quiz at 80000hours.org slash articles slash canyouguess and see if you can guess what's effective.

The quiz asks you to guess which social interventions work and which don't.

We've tested it on hundreds of people and they hardly do better than chance.

So before you choose a social problem to work on, ask yourself, 1.

Is there a way to make progress on this problem with rigorous evidence behind it?

For instance, lots of studies have shown that malaria nets prevent malaria.

Two, alternatively, is there a way to test promising but unproven programs that could help solve this problem and find out whether they work?

And three, is this a problem where there's a small but realistic chance of making a massive impact?

For instance, stopping catastrophic pandemics via better policy?

If the answer to all of these is no, then it's probably best to find something else.

Look for the best balance of the factors.

You probably won't find something that does brilliantly on all three dimensions.

Rather, look for what does best on balance.