I’m confused why at times this difference can even be an order of magnitude or greater. (I.e 1000 patients receiving the new treatment vs 100 receiving nothing or a placebo.) What am I missing?
Wouldn’t this just lend a more favorable outcome for the drug being studied and help a manufacturer meet the statistical criteria for clinical significance? This, if true, seems unethical. Why not just make them as equal as possible from a representative sample?
In: Mathematics
You’re looking for a variety of possible outcomes, side effects, and possible adverse effects from a drug trial, but generally speaking we know what placebos do to people and don’t need a big group of people not getting the drug to prove that not getting it doesn’t give noticeable results. Having a big active pool means you’re more likely to get any given random side effect, even if it’s not very common. Having a placebo group means you have a clean sample of the same sample background to compare your active results to.
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