Are we blind to the limits of double-blind medical studies?

Are we blind to the limits of double-blind medical studies?

A blind study is a clinical trial in which the subject or the investigator or both are unaware of which trial product/drug the subject is taking [1,2]. In Medicine, scientists and clinicians regard one specific kind of blind study, the double-blind (DB) study-in which both patient and rater are unaware of the medication the patient is receiving— as the definitive way to prove a drug is useful. ...

Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies

Numerous randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies and observational studies have demonstrated that statins decrease mortality and major cardiovascular events in older high-risk persons with hypercholesterolemia. The Heart Protection Study found that statins decreased mortality and major cardiovascular events in high-risk persons regardless of the initial level of serum lipids, age, ...

Moving to the Double-Blind Review System

Double-blind peer review.

Since Nature Nanotechnology launched in October 2006, our approach to peer review has been the same. We, like most science journals, use ‘single-blind’ peer review: that is, the referees of a paper know who the authors are but the authors don’t know who the referees are. We are now making a change to this process and will offer ‘doubleblind’ peer review — in which referees review a paper withou...

Double Blind Experiment