The “project” is intrinsic to modern international development – yet this basic form of organising our work is not something neutral or benign, says Caitlin Scott, but has real, often distorting, effects on the way development organisations think and act.

Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) are all the rage among development wonks at the moment. Imported from medical research, they offer the tantalizing allure to social scientists of finally overcoming the Achilles’ heel of real-world research – the counterfactual (aka ‘how do we know what would have happened if we hadn’t lobbied the government/ employed the teachers/ built the road etc?).