I have thought a bit more about the blinding issue.
One question that comes to mind:
How do we trust that the placebo is a real placebo and substantially different then the drug? The company producing the product wants to show a difference. Therefore they have no incentive to give both parties the same product.
On the other hand the company could mix some slight poison into the placebo. Even an ineffective drug beats a poison.
Therefore the placebo has to be produced or purchased by a trusted organisation and that organisation has to package the placebo in the same box that it’s packaging the drug.
This is awesomely paranoid. Thank you for pointing this out.
I’m a little worried a solution here will call for whoever controls the webapp to also be an expert at creating placebos for every product type. (If we trust contract manufacturers to be honest, then the issue of adding poisons to a placebo can be handled by having them ship directly to the third party for mailing… but I that’s already the default case).
Perhaps poisons can be discovered by looking at other products which performed the same protocol? “This experiment has to be re-done because the control group mysteriously got sick” doesn’t seem like a good solution though...
I’ll wrestle with this. Maybe something with MaxL’s answer to #8 might be possible?
I’m a little worried a solution here will call for whoever controls the webapp to also be an expert at creating placebos for every product type.
How about… company with product type X suggests placebo Y. Webapp/process owner confirms suitability of placebo Y with unaffiliated/blinded subject matter expert in the field of product X. If confirmed as suitable, placebo is produced by unaffiliated external company (who doesn’t know what the placebo is intended for, only the formulation of requested items).
Alternately, the webapp/process owner could produce the confirmed placebo, but I’m not sure if this makes sense cost-wise, and also it may open the company up to accusations of corruption, because the webapp/process owner is not blinded to who the recipient company is, and therefore might collude.
I have thought a bit more about the blinding issue.
One question that comes to mind: How do we trust that the placebo is a real placebo and substantially different then the drug? The company producing the product wants to show a difference. Therefore they have no incentive to give both parties the same product.
On the other hand the company could mix some slight poison into the placebo. Even an ineffective drug beats a poison.
Therefore the placebo has to be produced or purchased by a trusted organisation and that organisation has to package the placebo in the same box that it’s packaging the drug.
This is awesomely paranoid. Thank you for pointing this out.
I’m a little worried a solution here will call for whoever controls the webapp to also be an expert at creating placebos for every product type. (If we trust contract manufacturers to be honest, then the issue of adding poisons to a placebo can be handled by having them ship directly to the third party for mailing… but I that’s already the default case).
Perhaps poisons can be discovered by looking at other products which performed the same protocol? “This experiment has to be re-done because the control group mysteriously got sick” doesn’t seem like a good solution though...
I’ll wrestle with this. Maybe something with MaxL’s answer to #8 might be possible?
How about… company with product type X suggests placebo Y. Webapp/process owner confirms suitability of placebo Y with unaffiliated/blinded subject matter expert in the field of product X. If confirmed as suitable, placebo is produced by unaffiliated external company (who doesn’t know what the placebo is intended for, only the formulation of requested items).
Alternately, the webapp/process owner could produce the confirmed placebo, but I’m not sure if this makes sense cost-wise, and also it may open the company up to accusations of corruption, because the webapp/process owner is not blinded to who the recipient company is, and therefore might collude.