Why do scientific experiments (mainly in neuroscience and psychology) need to be done on more than 1 person? I was under the impression that the most important part of determining the study’s accuracy was to ensure that the outcome had a less than 5% chance of occurring without the theorised variable.
Couldn’t a situation emerge where the outcome was almost certainly attributed to the variable in question even with one person. For example, something extremely random, like (stupid example) a blood clot forming in someone’s left pinky finger after being reminded of childhood trauma (and it was predicted beforehand).
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There will always be extraneous variables, but the larger the sample size the easier it is to tell what is or is not an extraneous variable. In one person you would have no way if determining cause and effect if a blood clot happened during some trial, but if only one person out of 100 had that happen, you can more easily determine it was a fluke. You would still have to mention in your study that that happened, at the very beat you can say like this may have a 1/100 chance that you’ll get a blood clot from this, but thats much more accurate than if it happened in a one person study where 100% of the people involved developed a clot during the trial
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