People in control groups are usually given a sugar pill and are observed to assess if any changes occur to their health during the experiments. How do we know that these changes, if any, were the result of taking the sugar pill and not just random changes that might have happened even without taking the placebo? Are there any studies that prove that the placebo effect really exist?
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I can’t explain li5 but the answer is „statistical significance“. You can check if the result you’re getting from a test has a chance to come by randomly / by chance / by non related effects – and how strong the chance is. The scientific community talks of significant results when this chance is as low as 5%.
But this value is only the start. Depending on your field and test you make, one should strive for higher values to have more confidence in the result. You can increase this by having a larger sample size for example:
If you have more test cases the chance of getting a specific result randomly or by non related effects is lower.
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