" Esther Duflo, a professor at MIT with a strong French accent, likens all this research on development aid to medieval bloodletting.6 The once popular medical practice involved placing leeches on patients’ veins in order to rebalance their bodily humors. If the patient returned to health, the physician could pat himself on the back. If the patient died, it was clearly God’s will. Though those doctors acted with the best of intentions, nowadays we realize that bloodletting cost millions of lives. Even in 1799, the year Alessandro Volta invented the electric battery, President George Washington was relieved of several pints of blood to treat a sore throat. Two days later, he died. Bloodletting, in other words, is a case where the remedy is worse than the disease. The question is, does the same apply to development aid? According to Professor Duflo, both remedies certainly share one key feature, which is the fundamental lack of scientific proof. "

― Rutger Bregman , Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World