How sound is the double-blind design for evaluating psychotropic drugs?
The failing in the double blind testing method for psychotropic drugs is not in the type of placebo used but that the test method does not confirm that the drug actually caused an improvement. It is a statistical correlation not proof.
Those doing the testing are unaware of a little known problem capable of causing psychiatric symptoms that continue with Subliminal Distraction exposure but remit with no treatment when that exposure stops
The problem was discovered when it caused mental breaks for office workers in 1964. The cubicle was designed to block peripheral vision for a concentrating worker to prevent it in offices by 1968. It is explained in first semester college psychology under peripheral vision reflexes.
Since drug testing does not screen for this phenomonon there is no way to know how many of the improvements during testing were spontaneous remissions of Subliminal Distraction episodes.
VisionAndPsychosis.Net
Fisher S; Greenberg RP Department of Psychiatry, State University of New York Health Science Center, Syracuse 13210. Sufficient data have accumulated to raise serious doubts about the integrity of the double-blind design that is presumed to shield psychotropic drug trials from bias and expectations. A major deficit in most drug trials has been the use of inert rather than active placebos. The deficiencies of the double-blind paradigm call for a questioning stance with respect to previous studies of psychotropic drug efficacy. Various possible ways of strengthening the double-blind paradigm are reviewed.
