3 ms·
You don't need to have a placebo to do a controlled trial, you can just have a control arm of people you administer nothing to. How are you going to know if you
by StavrosK 7y ago
You don't need to have a placebo to do a controlled trial, you can just have a control arm of people you administer nothing to. How are you going to know if you have an improvement if you don't have something to compare your treatment to, though?
- fhars 7y agoYou need the placebo for the double blind RCT, which is still kind of the gold standard. But pronating patients is hard to do in a double blind fashion, so it is less of an issue here.
- gus_massa 7y agoThe double blind part is very difficult, but at least they can have a randomized control group [1]. It doesn't sound very difficult. Also, in most cases the control group get the "standard" treatment, because "do nothing" (taking literally the GP) is too bad. And you want to be sure that the new treatment is better than the "standard" treatment. [1] A real randomized control group, not an unrelated bunch of guys in another city of France.
- bobosha 7y agoIn some cases, the placebo is a currently approved treatment.
- raverbashing 7y ago> How are you going to know if you have an improvement if you don't have something to compare your treatment to, though? Historical data? Past experiments? Sure, they might have biases, but the higher sample size of historical data can help with that. I think (specific) control groups make sense when you're talking about small effects or very specific cases (for example, the control group will undergo the standard treatment instead of the new treatment)
- gus_massa 7y agoHistorical data is useful as a rough guideline, but it is very difficult to use to make comparisons. For example: If there is a small Ebola outbreak in New York and you give the patients hydroxychloroquine and the death rate is 80%, is it good or bad?