“School: the scientific fragility of studies that make a positive assessment of experiments”

Academic Marion Oury is a lecturer in economics at Paris Dauphine-PSL.

Experimentation is fashionable today when it comes to school.

Some consider, by referring to medicine, that this method is the "scientific" approach par excellence: that of small, cautious steps, also that which allows the triumph of reason over ideology.

If this vision is of course not entirely unfounded, it must however be welcomed with the necessary critical spirit.

When an experiment is complex (and is there a more delicate, more subtle subject, where the spirit of finesse dear to Pascal is more necessary than school?), it can be extremely difficult to draw up an exhaustive list of points to consider in order to judge its effects.

In other words, in case of omission of one dimension or another, one can ignore his ignorance.

Not being aware of it: economists use the term

for this sort of situation.

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This phenomenon…

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