Placebos and Blinding Flashcards

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What is a placebo?

A placebo is a treatment that looks like the real drug but has no active medicine in it.

Placebos are used so scientists can compare the effects of the new drug with no real treatment.

The placebo effect is when a person feels better after a dummy treatment because they believe it will help.

The control group is the group of volunteers who are given a placebo or existing treatment, not the new drug.

A placebo makes the trial fairer, because both groups think they are being treated in the same way.

In a blind trial, the volunteers do not know if they are getting the real drug or the placebo.

In a single-blind trial, the volunteers do not know which treatment they get, but the doctors do know.

In a double-blind trial, neither the volunteers nor the doctors know who is getting the real drug or the placebo until the end.

They reduce bias because doctors and patients cannot change how they report or judge symptoms based on which treatment is given.

Random allocation makes the groups similar, so any differences in health are more likely due to the drug and not other factors.

Scientists compare how much the new drug group improves compared with the placebo group to see if the drug really works.

Volunteers give informed consent and are told they may get a placebo instead of the new drug.