To the people who say that results are everything, I would say, yeah-- but there are *no* studies that show that WWASP gets results. Satisfaction surveys are not studies.
And anecdotes are not evidence-- unless you do a controlled trial which compares people who are sent to WWASP v. people who are left alone or given an alternative form of treatment, you cannot know that something works.
Lots of cancer treatments look like they work if you just go by anecdotes-- but once you do a controlled trial, they fail miserably.
it doesn't matter what you believe about your own experience-- if you don't have an identical twin who wasn't treated (and even then, that sample size is too small), you can't tell what worked. most likely, you just grew up.
and, the idea that "troubled teens" are likely to die without WWASP is demonstrably false. There are roughly 40 million teenagers in America-- the surgeon general estimates that about 4 million of them are 'troubled'-- ie, serious drug problem or behavior problems or mental illness.
Fewer than 20,000 teens die every year. Even if all of those deaths were from risky behavior (which they aren't-- some are from cancer and unavoidable, non-alcohol or drug-related car accidents) and even if the deaths only occurred amongst the "at risk' 4 million, that's still a risk per year of death of only 4 in 1000 per year.
And even heroin addicts who shoot up every day only have a single digit per year (usually 1-4%) death risk-- so unless you were shooting up, your risky behavior was probably far less risky than you think. Sure, not a good idea to ride with drunk drivers and hang out with meth addicts-- but unless you were hanging out in inner city neighborhoods with violent drug dealers (not slacker deadheads selling pot or even coke or meth to suburban kids), your actual risk of death was exaggerated by the program and by your parents.
my guess is the number of truly poor kids who were at genuine risk who were sent to WWASP can be counted on one finger or less.
if you want to talk about results, you have to produce real data: controlled clinical trials (plural) published in peer reviewed journals. nothing else meets modern standards of evidence.
