Yes. In this case, you have two outcomes: Recovering and Not Recovering. You also have two starting states: Drug and Placebo (which both came off of the origina

Yes. In this case, you have two outcomes: Recovering and Not Recovering. You also have two starting states: Drug and Placebo (which both came off of the original starting state, Participant in Study, with a 50% probability). So your Drug -> Recover has a 98% probability, vs. Drug -> Not Recover of 2%. Likewise, Placebo -> Recover has only a 2% probability, vs. Placebo -> Not Recover of 98%. In this case, you know with very high probability that the fork you stuck in the road caused two very clear, disparate outcomes. Especially because you actually began the "give drug" phase. However, usually medical trials have results more along the lines of: Placebo group of 35 participants: 10 recovered in < 5 days, 12 recovered in < 10 days, and 13 failed to recover. Drug group of 35 participants: 17 recovered in < 5 days, 13 recovered in < 10 days, and 5 failed to recover. With data like that, clearly SOMETHING causes people to recover, and clearly your drug is not the underlying cause of recovery. It may be supporting whatever process is causing recovery, but it's very unclear whether that's even the case.