Why does there have to be a plecebo/control group in a drug test?
In: Biology
1.) Sometimes just convincing people they are receiving a treatment may be enough to alter the results of a study. Gavin a placebo group controls for this by creating a group of patients who think they are receiving a study drug when they aren’t.
2.) Sometimes you just have random variation. Having a group that isn’t receiving the study drug helps analyze whether a study result could just be a consequence of random variation.
In a hypothetical real situation: if you had a experimental cancer drug that you gave to 100 people with cancer, and 50 of them were still alive a year later? Does you drug do anything?
Well that example is a bit flawed since there are variables that can be somewhat easily monitored. But something like an antidepressant may be different: just telling people they are receiving an antidepressant drug might alter their responses on follow up surveys, while some patients not receiving the drug or placebo might recover without it.
Latest Answers