A recent blog by Chris Dunford and colleagues at Freedom from Hunger–Different Levels of “Knowing” the Impact of Microfinance–struck me as balanced and insightful. It recognized, with a refreshing lack of defensiveness, that evidence from randomized controlled trials is essential (not just useful) for testing claims about the effects of microfinance. At the same time it insisted—correctly, I think—that practitioner experience during years of work with poor clients constitutes real knowledge.
Maybe the question is “knowledge for whom?” For instance, my own 27 years of unsystematic experience with a variety of development funding agencies have left me with some conclusions regarding them that I feel very confident about—confident enough to base career decisions on those conclusions. But it’s quite another matter to communicate that knowledge publicly in a way that justifies others who haven’t shared my experience to be equally confident about those conclusions, or to accept my conclusions rather than differing conclusions that someone else might be offering. That’s why we need social sciences.
On another subject, Chris recognizes that in the real world individual stories raise more funding than statistics do. So none of us should complain if fund-raising brochures are long on anecdotes and short on regression analyses. At the same time, I think Chris would agree that stories which may be appropriate in a fund-raising brochure are much more problematic when they are trotted out as evidence in a serious discussion about how we can know whether microfinance is effective or not.
