What is a randomised clinical trial?
The commonest way a medical research trial is run is to give a new treatment to some patients and compare the results they get with another group of patients given an older type of treatment or possibly a ‘dummy’ treatment, called a placebo. However, human beings are all different and we have to ensure that each group in the trial contains a similar evenly balanced ‘mixture’. If we don’t do this and the group who gets one treatment is different from the group who gets the alternative treatment then the results of the research can be biased. A randomised clinical trial assigns the participants randomly to the treatment groups being investigated. The play of chance results in the two treatment groups being comparable. This means that any difference in the outcome experienced by the people taking the different treatments is down to the treatment they received and nothing else.
