“Does blinding as it’s commonly done mean that the patients don’t know whether they are taking the placebo or not?” You likely get a lot of them falsely answering that it means that because they are ignorant of the literature that found that if you ask patients they frequently have some knowledge.”
Accurate—and obvious on reflection, particularly with the COVID vaccines. I knew multiple people in the COVID vaccine trials. Just over half confidently said they got the real vaccine, and they knew it because of side effects. The rest were in most cases less certain but suspected they got the placebo, because so many participants had the side effects and they didn’t.
Yes, it’s worth noting here that if researchers would care about whether patients know whether or not they get verum or the placebo, they could easily add another question to the forms that the patients fill out and report the answers in their papers.
The status quo of how trials are run is that researchers are willfully ignorant about the extent to which patients know they take verum or placebo.
This is an important point that is often ignored.
“Does blinding as it’s commonly done mean that the patients don’t know whether they are taking the placebo or not?” You likely get a lot of them falsely answering that it means that because they are ignorant of the literature that found that if you ask patients they frequently have some knowledge.”
Accurate—and obvious on reflection, particularly with the COVID vaccines. I knew multiple people in the COVID vaccine trials. Just over half confidently said they got the real vaccine, and they knew it because of side effects. The rest were in most cases less certain but suspected they got the placebo, because so many participants had the side effects and they didn’t.
Example: Moderna And Pfizer Vaccine Studies Hampered As Placebo Recipients Get R eal Shot : Shots—Health News : NPR “Mott, who lives in the Overland Park, Kan., got a strong reaction to the second shot, so she correctly surmised she had received the Moderna vaccine, not the placebo.”
Our blind and double-blind methodology is nowhere near the perfect black box we pretend.
Yes, it’s worth noting here that if researchers would care about whether patients know whether or not they get verum or the placebo, they could easily add another question to the forms that the patients fill out and report the answers in their papers.
The status quo of how trials are run is that researchers are willfully ignorant about the extent to which patients know they take verum or placebo.