Thread by @wmnjoya

I going to do a thread breaking down this article that @NimiHoffmann was kind enough to send me some months back, when she saw me asking about the connection between @DFID_UK, Bridge, and CBC.

I'm doing this because Kenyans paid for me to be trained to spot this stuff.

https://twitter.com/NimiHoffmann/status/1185048253894664192

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK That said, those who would like to read it for themselves can find the non paywall version I initially read.

https://twitter.com/NimiHoffmann/status/1185164812877217792

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK To get what is at stake here, let me start with something we are all familiar with.

Every time GoK wants to implement a policy, they tell us that they are basing their policy on benchmarking and case studies abroad.

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK GoK, and its Western donors, all know that once you mention science, and Western experience or experiments, we will not say a word. Especially Kenyan academics.

So corrupting science and sponsoring unethical or fake research has become a way to pass off poor or harmful policy.

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK As Hoffman says here, this is not new. Some of the most infamous experiments include the ones in Tuskegee, during the Holocaust, in apartheid South Africa.

https://twitter.com/NimiHoffmann/status/1185150625207803905

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK So her article "When are experiments corrupt?" lays out a similar scenario. Governments like ours don't sponsor local professionals or researchers. Foreign governments and corporations fund foreign scholars to carry out research here to justify a policy which GoK implements.

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK Hoffman then explains how policy research experiments are basically bad research. They flout all ethics in the book, they seek no ethics approvals (after all, it's on Africans), and they operate on a fallacy that research must have direct impact such as policy and implementation.

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK Now all you who repeat "what's your solution" will recognize yourselves here.

Hoffman explains that many social problems are not cause and effect. So for policy experiments to claim that they will result in direct benefits, they have to avoid ethics review and massage the data.

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK As it so happens, months before the #NobelEconomicsPrize was announced, Hoffman had singled out development economics, and the freshly minted laureats, for this unethical kind of research.

I didn't notice that until now. Wow.

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK But for these cause and effect experiments to influence policy, they need large samples. The only people who can afford those samples are governments, and the corporations who want government business. So both corporations and governments run rackets sponsoring this research.

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK Once private money and governments in bed with private money fund research, you have an ethical problem. People won't ask the ethical questions about the harm that the research may do, and researchers can't report results that are not favorable to private money that wants an ROI.

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK These policy experiments also rely on government coersion and misinformation, yet research requires informed consent. The people in western Kenya were probably told "serikali imesema" when this experiment on corrupting their souls with money were carried out by the laureates.

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK Before I finally get to the DfID experiment on our education system in 2010, I just want to remind us all that these experiments are largely done in the global "South" or on especially black communities in the United States. That is the case of CBC.

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK The @DFID_UK experiment of 2010 involved British taxes to experiment in western Kenya with untrained and poorly paid teachers teaching in school. The thinking was that reduing trained teachers could make education less expensive. That sounds nice for GoK, doesn't it?

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK The researchers based their experiment on research that said that NGO funded schools had better exam results because those schools hired teachers on contract, many times untrained and poorly paid, since the teachers feared being fired. So why not do that in public schools?

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK But if they knew that imposing a NGO school experience directly on public schools would raise questions about research ethics, applicability and other factors. So what did they do?

God, this is where it gets insane.

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK They got an NGO, @WorldVision, to include its schools in the experiment, and then staggered payments as follows:

64 public schools
64 schools of World Vision (PS: also sponsored by @DFID_UK)
64 control schools from both public and WV

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK @WorldVision This is how teaching payments were staggered:

96 schools with teachers earning 5k a month
32 schools with teachers earning 9k a month
Total number of people affected: 196 teachers

But GoK got greedy. It decided to apply it to 18,000 teachers in schools attended by 1.3m kids

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK @WorldVision Unfortunately for GoK, KNUT smelled a rat and demanded that GoK absorb all the contract teachers as fully paid teachers. ei-ie.org/en/detail/1920…

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK @WorldVision But the interests behind this vicious experiment on our kids were not phased. They concoted a "scientific" explanation for why KNUT rejected contract teachers. They used the conservative American explanation: the teachers don't care about the kids but about their salaries.

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK @WorldVision Here's how they put it

"Large-scale policy interventions are likely to provoke political economy reactions from groups whose rents are threatened by reform, creating an endogenous policy response that counteracts the objectives of reform – the “seesaw effect.”

Isn't it awesome?

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK @WorldVision political economy reactions = strike
from groups = unions (KNUT)
rents = salaries and professional standards
counteracts objectives of reform = opposes privatization

So many words to simply say that teachers went on strike.

I love it! I must learn to write this is.😂

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK @WorldVision But let me not get distracted.

This experiment on schools in western Kenya was taken through an academic laundromat by a scholar called Tessa Bold, an Oxford econ grad, 3 Kenyan scholars and guy who works at an NGO with interests in education reform. cgdev.org/sites/default/…

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK @WorldVision That kizungu mingi (political economy bla bla) they quote comes from Daron Acemoglu, an economist at MTI, who said that Ghana's prime minister Kofi Busia was overthrown because he implemented an IMF policy that was good for economics but not for politics. jstor.org/stable/20799152

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK @WorldVision I'm so fascinated by this use of scholarship and language, that I want to spend my time laughing, and probably taking a stiff drink. I honestly thought that these scientific games ended after Said wrote Orientalism.

But back to my promise to break down Hoffman's article.

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK @WorldVision Hoffman then explains what was wrong with calling KNUT teachers "rent-seeking."

1. KNUT were demanding permanent employment and equal pay for the contract teachers, not for themselves.
2. Introducing different pay for the same work is a form of discrimination, not efficiency.

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK @WorldVision 3. The scholars called teachers "rent-seeking" based on an assumption about teachers' motives, not on any form of inquiry.

In the next section of her article, Hoffman discusses the vested interests in the experiment (unethical bias)

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK @WorldVision 1. GoK badly wanted poorly paid teachers because it had little money to fund free primary school education, and it knew scrapping FPE would be a political sin. So it froze teacher hiring, and then planned to slash teachers salaries. So contract teachers seemed a great idea.

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK @WorldVision And here is the juicy part. Muigai was minister for finance and acting minister for education at the time.

Wah wah wah! Don't you love history?

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK @WorldVision 2. Next vested interest was @DFID_UK. It announced that it would spend £36 million to promote private education and
health services during 2011–2015 (attention @fnoluga).

One of the beneficiaries of privatized social services was Bridge Academies. globaljustice.org.uk/news/2016/apr/…

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK @WorldVision @fnoluga The last section of Hoffman's article answers the question: why is this academic laundering of fraud by private sector and politicians possible?

1. Empire has learned to use racist assumptions about Africa but without the ethnographic racist language of the 19th century.

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK @WorldVision @fnoluga In other words, these days academics can still use the assumption that Africa is naturally dysfunctional without explicitly saying it, but at the same time say they care for Africa. It's called "neopatrimonialism."

But we all know Binyavanga said it best. granta.com/how-to-write-a…

@NimiHoffmann @DFID_UK @WorldVision @fnoluga The article concludes: call it neopatri....etc or not, the practice is the same ol same ol of bad research - doing experiments on African peoples without bothering to study the background or peoples, for the purpose of pushing imperial policy.

END.