Rossi's Metallic Laws of social program evaluation ( https://www.gwern.net/docs/sociology/1987-rossi https://www.gwern.net/docs/sociology/1987-rossi ): - The I

Rossi's Metallic Laws of social program evaluation ( https://www.gwern.net/docs/sociology/1987-rossi https://www.gwern.net/docs/sociology/1987-rossi ): - The Iron Law of Evaluation: "The expected value of any net impact assessment of any large scale social program is zero." - The Stainless Steel Law of Evaluation: "The better designed the impact assessment of a social program, the more likely is the resulting estimate of net impact to be zero." - The Brass Law of Evaluation: "The more social programs are designed to change individuals, the more likely the net impact of the program will be zero." - The Zinc Law of Evaluation: "Only those programs that are likely to fail are evaluated."