{"paper":{"title":"When Representative Samples Produce Worse Outcomes: Scale-up Decisions and Testing in Small-Budget RCTs","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"stat.ME","authors_text":"Hannah Li, Hongseok Namkoong, Isaac Scheinfeld","submitted_at":"2026-06-11T16:19:31Z","abstract_excerpt":"Small randomized controlled trials are often used to screen interventions before running larger follow-up studies. This is a critical phase of experimentation, as missing effective interventions or scaling up harmful ones can be very costly. A common proposal to mitigate these errors is to recruit samples that are representative of the target population, but this is often challenging in resource-constrained pilots. We challenge the narrative that representative samples are always superior by showing that when statistical significance testing determines whether interventions receive further stu"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2606.13531","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2606.13531/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}