Errata
Errata for Doing Good Better
Specific mistakes
p. 4: Two damning reports were released, one by UNICEF and one by the Swiss Resource Centre and Consultancies for Development (SKAT).
Although the first report carries the UNICEF logo on its cover, it was not approved by UNICEF. Vanesa Tobin, from UNICEF, clarifies in a private letter forwarded to me by Colin Morris, Director of Roundabout Water Solutions: "The report is based on pre-assessment field visits as part of a joint World Vision/UNICEF internal review conducted in August 2007. However, the UNICEF report was issued erroneously. It is UNICEF practice to share draft assessment reports with all concerned parties for their comments prior to issuing a final report. This was not done."p. 41: The primary recipient of the Fistula Foundation's revenue is the Hamlin Fistula Hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
I had intended this sentence to refer to the Fistula Foundation as of 2009, when the story I was telling was set. However, I understand it could easily be interpreted as referring to the Fistula Foundation now, in which case it would be inaccurate. An accurate and unambiguous sentence would be: "In 2009, the primary recipient of the Fistula Foundation’s revenue was the Hamlin Fistula Hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia." The reasons I did not in 2009 think that the Fistula Foundation was the most cost-effective charity had nothing to do with the size of the charity or the locations it operated in, but instead were to do with the cost per fistula surgery.p. 48: The numbers in the horizontal axis should be: 51, 53.8, 56.6, 59.4, 62.2, 65, 67.8, 70.6, 73.4, 76.2, 79. (This typo appears only in the US hardcover edition.)
p. 59: The Haitian earthquake, by comparison, caused 150,000 [deaths].
The citation for this number is here, though the study estimates the death toll to be 160,000, and there is controversy over the number of casualties from the earthquake.p. 59: Per person, Japan was thirty times richer than Haiti. As a whole, the country was a thousand times richer.
In 2010, Japan was 22 times richer than Haiti in terms of GDP per capita (source), and 861 times richer than Haiti in terms of GDP (source).
p. 61: The figure for Kaposi's sarcoma should be 0.02, not 0.2. (This typo appears only in early printings of the UK edition.)
p. 61: Every year, cancer… is responsible for 7.6 percent of all deaths and ill health worldwide (measured in terms of QALYs lost).
Cancer (all forms) accounted for 8.13% of worldwide QALYs in 2013 (source).
p. 71: [The 2008 Sichuan] earthquake… killed eighty-seven thousand people.
69,000 people were reported dead, and over 18,000 were listed as missing as of July 2008 (2 months after the disaster hit) (source).
p. 73: Malaria is responsible for 3.3 percent of QALYs lost worldwide.
In 2017, Malaria was responsible for 1.8% of all QALYs lost worldwide (source).
p. 73: In reality, only $1.6 billion per year is spent on malaria treatment.
According to this WHO report, “In 2018, an estimated US$ 2.7 billion was invested in malaria control and elimination efforts globally by governments of malaria endemic countries and international partners – a reduction from the US$ 3.2 billion that was invested in 2017.”
p. 80: In 1966, Ohio-born doctor D.A. Henderson became the leader of the WHO’s Global Smallpox Eradication campaign ... he was fifteen years younger than everyone else in the program…
According to Henderson’s book, he was very young for a unit chief (“few of whom were then under fifty”) but the difference in age between him and other members of the unit was not as large as my passage stated (“Dr. Isao Arita… was about my own age”).
p. 81: Henderson’s success resulted in a string of accolades. He won more than a dozen major awards, including the Public Welfare Medal, the National Medal of Science, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom—the highest civilian award in the United States. He received honorary degrees from 17 different universities ...
The correct source for this information is this obituary.
p. 81: immediately after 9/11 he became President George W. Bush’s lead expert on bioterrorism.
The correct source for this information is this article in the Smithsonian.
p. 81: [Henderson] was even knighted by the king of Thailand.
Henderson was not knighted by the king of Thailand but he did receive the Prince Mahidol Award.
p. 82: Since smallpox was an exclusively human disease, [Zhdanov] argued, it would be easier to eradicate than mosquito-born infections such as malaria.
The correct source for this information is Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox.
p. 83: For the first time in its history, the WHO agreed to form a campaign to completely eradicate a disease.
The WHO supported a malaria eradication campaign before approving the smallpox eradication campaign (source).
p. 141: [Bailey Norwood] rates beef cattle at 6 and dairy cows at 4. In contrast his average rating for broiler chickens is –1, and for pigs and caged hens is –5.
Norwood's estimates are found on Table 8.2 (p. 229) of Compassion, by the Pound (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011):
My first sentence above correctly reports Norwood's welfare scores for the corresponding market animals, but the figures in the second sentence are mistaken. This mistake doesn't affect my conclusions about pork and egg consumption, but it does have implications for what I say about chickens. While Norwood believes that breeder chickens have negative lives (-4), he thinks that the lives of market chickens are positive (3). And because market chickens outnumber breeder chickens by more than two orders of magnitude, these estimates imply that demand for chicken meat increases animal welfare overall. This contradicts my claim, found on p. 142, that cutting chicken from one's diet is an effective way of reducing animal suffering.
While I'm in general happy to defer to Norwood's expertise, I think that his specific estimates for chickens are at odds with the available evidence, which to me strongly suggests that chickens should be given a negative score. I therefore stand by the recommendations in my book, despite the fact that they are not supported by Norwood in this particular instance. Readers interested in forming their own opinion are encouraged to take a look at this report from the Humane Society of the United States, which is the best discussion of these issues that I was able to find, as well as this exchange between Norwood and researcher Simon Knutsson (on the assumptions behind Norwood's estimates) and this chapter from Nick Cooney's Veganomics (featuring an alternative estimate by animal welfare expert Sara Shields).
(I thank Avi Norowitz for kindly bringing this error to my attention.)
pp. 144-5: However, the subjects were told that, whether or not their answers were correct, they'd be paid five cents every time they indicated there were more dots on the left-hand side of the line and five cents every time they indicated there were more dot on the right hand side.
The boldfaced text should be: 0.5 cents.
(I thank Mitch Trachtenberg for kindly bringing this error to my attention.)p. 169: With an economics PhD from Harvard, the founder [of GiveDirectly], Paul Niehaus, had very good earning-to-give options.
GiveDirectly was co-founded by Paul Niehaus, Michael Faye, Rohit Wanchoo and Jeremy Shapiro, not founded by Paul Niehaus alone as the above sentence implies.p. 238: The US government spends about $8 billion per year on climate change efforts, and several hundred million dollars are spent each year by foundations.
The correct source for this information is this GiveWell analysis.
p. 238: Climate change may potentially lead to the extinction of 20 to 30 percent of species.
The correct source for this data is this IPCC report.
p. 239: About $11 million per year is spent on research into geoengineering.
The correct source for this data is this investigation by Open Philanthropy Project.
Chapters 5 & 9
Brian Tomasik was one of the first people to write about replaceability in altruistic career choice, and coined the term ‘Earn to Give’, however he was not cited. See this blog post by Jeff Kaufman for a history of ‘Earning to Give’.
Chapter 5
I failed to cite Gordan Irlam, whose earlier blogposts were the basis for the discussion of Viktor Zhdanov. His posts were In praise of Victor Zhdanov (2011) and this blog post.
Thanks to an anonymous commentator who brought many of these errors to my attention.
General comments
Deworming.
In the book, I claimed that deworming programs significantly improve school performance and attendance, and provide considerable health and economic benefits (pp. 8-9). The first of these claims was based on Miguel and Kremer 2004, a widely cited randomized trial of deworming. This analysis has been the subject of some considerable debate. In my framing of deworming, I could have been clearer that the extent of the benefits of deworming are still uncertain: the key argument for deworming is that it's exceptionally cheap, and it's at least highly plausible, given what we know, that there are very significant benefits, not that it's certain that there are very significant benefits. (This is enough for deworming to be an outstanding program: If you had a dozen worms living in your stomach, and there was a $0.50 pill that could kill them, giving you a good chance - but not a guarantee - of significantly greater earnings later in life, would you do so?). I could also have been clearer that the most robust evidence in favour of deworming regards its long-term benefits in terms of increased productivity and increased earnings, rather than short-term benefits in terms of school attendance. This is explained in more depth by GiveWell and Giving What We Can in two blog posts discussing the issue; my views are largely the same as those given in those blog posts.PlayPump.
Although I stand by my assessment of the PlayPump in the Introduction of the book, readers may be interested in taking a look at this response letter by Colin Morris, Director of RoundAbout Water Solutions (published here by kind permission of Mr Morris).
Errata for Moral Uncertainty
You can find errata for Moral Uncertainty here.
Other Errata
The best person who ever lived is an unknown Ukrainian man, Boingboing (2015)
I failed to cite Gordan Irlam, In praise of Victor Zhdanov (2011) and this blog post.
[Henderson] was even knighted by the king of Thailand.
Henderson was not knighted by the king of Thailand but he did receive the Prince Mahidol Award.
He won more than a dozen major awards, including the Public Welfare Medal, the National Medal of Science, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom—the highest civilian award in the United States. He received honorary degrees from 17 different universities ...
The correct source for this information is this obituary.
...immediately after 9/11 he became President George W. Bush’s lead expert on bioterrorism.
The correct source for this information is this article in the Smithsonian.
Since smallpox was an exclusively human disease, [Zhdanov] argued, it would be easier to eradicate than mosquito-born infections such as malaria.
The correct source for this information is Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox.
Effective Reducetarianism, The Reducetarian Solution, Brian Kateman (ed.), 2017.
I failed to cite Brian Tomasik and Julia Galef, who had made similar arguments previously.
Thanks to an anonymous commentator who brought many of these errors to my attention.