I suppose I don’t find it to be particularly plausible. Moreover, it seemed that you were discounting the study as offering any evidence at all regarding long-term effects; whereas it seems to me that short-term effects offer weak evidence regarding long-term effects. If we know something is short-term beneficial, that isn’t strong evidence of it being long-term beneficial — but it isn’t evidence of it being long-term harmful either.
It’s worth it to keep looking — I certainly agree that it’s a failure of many social interventions to look at only short-term effects, especially when this failure is iterated. That’s where we get Campbell’s Law from.
(That said, it would be really surprising if deeper investigation of social reality happened to closely confirm the preconceived notions of one particular political faction. I mean, seriously, why that one?)
I suppose I don’t find it to be particularly plausible. Moreover, it seemed that you were discounting the study as offering any evidence at all regarding long-term effects; whereas it seems to me that short-term effects offer weak evidence regarding long-term effects. If we know something is short-term beneficial, that isn’t strong evidence of it being long-term beneficial — but it isn’t evidence of it being long-term harmful either.
It’s worth it to keep looking — I certainly agree that it’s a failure of many social interventions to look at only short-term effects, especially when this failure is iterated. That’s where we get Campbell’s Law from.
(That said, it would be really surprising if deeper investigation of social reality happened to closely confirm the preconceived notions of one particular political faction. I mean, seriously, why that one?)