It’s not about badly run trials in the sense that trials are not run according to the gold standard. The issue is that taking active pills frequently feels different than taking sugar pills even when both pills look the same way. That’s information that patients can use to know whether they are on the active drug.
In a world where people would sincerely care about whether trials actually prevent the participants from knowing the questions that Rabkin’s asks would be routine questions in every trial.
Asking patients whether they think they got the drug or placebo, is querying for subjective knowledge. That’s a “way of knowing” that yields knowledge but that’s not practiced. A “way of knowing” that the paper you linked would predict to be neglected.
It’s not about badly run trials in the sense that trials are not run according to the gold standard. The issue is that taking active pills frequently feels different than taking sugar pills even when both pills look the same way. That’s information that patients can use to know whether they are on the active drug.
In a world where people would sincerely care about whether trials actually prevent the participants from knowing the questions that Rabkin’s asks would be routine questions in every trial.
Asking patients whether they think they got the drug or placebo, is querying for subjective knowledge. That’s a “way of knowing” that yields knowledge but that’s not practiced. A “way of knowing” that the paper you linked would predict to be neglected.