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gwern comments on Systemic review of antidepressants vs placebo commentary - Less Wrong Discussion

0 Post author: michael_b 03 June 2015 12:40PM

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Comment author: ChristianKl 03 June 2015 01:13:01PM 2 points [-]

This paper includes an interesting paragraph:

And noticing one of the listed side effects, would you not conclude that you had been given the real drug? In one study, 89% of the patients in the drug group correctly ‘‘guessed’’ that they had been given the real antidepressant, a result that is very unlikely to be due to chance

If that's true shouldn't we ask this question by default in placebo-blind trials?

Comment author: gwern 03 June 2015 06:37:44PM 0 points [-]

Probably but the use and interpretation of blinding indexes is still a bit controversial. For example, the 2001 CONSORT guidelines suggested using and reporting a blinding index but the latest 2010 version dropped it, saying:

Item 11 (blinding)—We added the specification of how blinding was done and, if relevant, a description of the similarity of interventions and procedures. We also eliminated text on “how the success of blinding (masking) was assessed” because of a lack of empirical evidence supporting the practice, as well as theoretical concerns about the validity of any such assessment (23, 24).

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