RCT can't fight poverty any more than judges awarding points to two boxers can be said to be engaged in prize-fighting. This methodology, if correctly employed, could, under certain highly unlikely conditions, improve decision making by people claiming to fight poverty. But listening to a smart person with expert domain knowledge would help even more.



Like ethical theory, RCT is not ethical or unethical in itself. It is, however, always sub-optimal and thus represents a waste of resources. On the other hand, stupidity by itself can't be called unethical.



Raising ethical questions raises ethical questions because they require either randomly choosing which ethical question to tackle first or else an unethical type of McKelvey 'agenda control' obtains.



One could object to the practice of everything on principle, following Kant's claim that it is always wrong to use human beings as a means to an end- viz. being the subject of the relevant practice. However, the presence of antagonomic preferences or arguments may be helpful. Thus it is unethical to have ethics review boards though not necessarily immoral to be stupid enough to qualify to serve on one.