What on earth is a placebo-controlled, double-blind prospective trial?
It sounds complicated, but the idea is actually pretty simple. Let’s say you are testing a potential new medication for depression. So you gather a group of depressed patients who are willing to participate in the study. You divide the group up into at least two groups. One group gets the new medication. The other group gets a sugar pill (a placebo). Here’s the catch: neither the patients nor the researchers know who is getting the medication and who is getting the pill. That is, they are blinded as to who got the pill and who didn’t. The reason it is called double-blind is that the researchers also don’t know who got the medication and who got placebo. Each pill will look identical. Only a number will identify the pill, and only after the study will the researchers know who got the pill and who got placebo. To make the study even more sophisticated, if the new medication causes a side effect, such as dry mouth or dizziness, the researchers will often use a medication that has similar
