Behavioral Insights: experiments are morally required

Behavioral Insights.

Here is last weeks roundup of interesting articles and some job opportunities:

1. Randomized experiments are morally required
Two weeks ago I shared the research that shows that many people think A/B testing is unethical, even when they think option A and B are equally fine. Cass Sunstein, author of the book 'Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness” responds:

"The problem, of course, is that if you don’t know whether A is better than B, it is an excellent idea to find out. Much of the time, A/B testing is the best way to do that. It’s not morally forbidden. If anything, it’s morally required. Randomized experiments may produce an “ick.” But if they promise to save money or lives, we ought to be doing them anyway." [read more]

2. Top challenges from the first Practical Online Controlled Experiments Summit
Last December 34 experts came together and discussed challenges (and some solutions) on doing A/B testing at scale. Now there is a paper summarizing the work:

"This is the first paper that brings together the top practical challenges in running Online Controlled Experiments (OCE's) at scale from thirty-four experts in thirteen different organizations with experience in testing more than one hundred thousand treatments last year alone. These challenges broadly  fall  into  four  categories:  analysis  of experiments, culture and engineering, deviations from traditional A/B tests, and data quality." [read paper]

*|INTERESTED:Would you also like insights in Dutch?:Yes please / ja graag|*(en nog een nederlandstalig artikel)
3. Hoe bewijs je causaliteit? 🇳🇱
Sanne Blauw duikt in de wereld van de causaliteit. Veel netelige kwesties – klimaatverandering, vaccinaties, immigratie – gaan uiteindelijk over oorzaak en gevolg. Want alleen als je weet wat een probleem veroorzaakt, kun je er iets aan doen. [lees het artikel]*|END:INTERESTED|*
 

Job opportunities:

• Head of Experimentation at Agoda

• Lead Data Scientist at VodafoneZiggo

• Head of Data at Schiphol Airport

• Data Analyst at Blendle

Have a great week!
— Kevin