Random guess and wishful thinking are the best blinding scenarios
Blinding is a methodologic safeguard of treatment evaluation, yet severely understudied empirically. Mathieu et al.'s theoretical analysis (2014) provided an important message that blinding cannot eliminate potential for bias associated with belief about allocation in randomized controlled tria...
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doaj-8396104ce2f5485a9942682afcc5b46a2020-11-25T00:36:40ZengElsevierContemporary Clinical Trials Communications2451-86542016-08-013C11712110.1016/j.conctc.2016.05.003Random guess and wishful thinking are the best blinding scenariosHeejung BangBlinding is a methodologic safeguard of treatment evaluation, yet severely understudied empirically. Mathieu et al.'s theoretical analysis (2014) provided an important message that blinding cannot eliminate potential for bias associated with belief about allocation in randomized controlled trial; just like the intent-to-treat principle does not guarantee unbiased estimation under noncompliance, the blinded randomized trial as a golden standard may produce bias. They showed possible biases but did not assess how large the bias could be in different scenarios. In this paper, we examined their findings, and numerically assessed and compared the bias in treatment effect parameters by simulation under frequently encountered blinding scenarios, aiming to identify the most ideal blinding scenarios in practice. We conclude that Random Guess and Wishful Thinking (e.g., participants tend to believe they received treatment) are the most ideal blinding scenarios, incurring minimal bias. We also find some evidence that imperfect or partial blinding can be better than no blinding.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S245186541530065XBiasBlindingBlinding indexClinical trial |
collection |
DOAJ |
language |
English |
format |
Article |
sources |
DOAJ |
author |
Heejung Bang |
spellingShingle |
Heejung Bang Random guess and wishful thinking are the best blinding scenarios Contemporary Clinical Trials Communications Bias Blinding Blinding index Clinical trial |
author_facet |
Heejung Bang |
author_sort |
Heejung Bang |
title |
Random guess and wishful thinking are the best blinding scenarios |
title_short |
Random guess and wishful thinking are the best blinding scenarios |
title_full |
Random guess and wishful thinking are the best blinding scenarios |
title_fullStr |
Random guess and wishful thinking are the best blinding scenarios |
title_full_unstemmed |
Random guess and wishful thinking are the best blinding scenarios |
title_sort |
random guess and wishful thinking are the best blinding scenarios |
publisher |
Elsevier |
series |
Contemporary Clinical Trials Communications |
issn |
2451-8654 |
publishDate |
2016-08-01 |
description |
Blinding is a methodologic safeguard of treatment evaluation, yet severely understudied empirically. Mathieu et al.'s theoretical analysis (2014) provided an important message that blinding cannot eliminate potential for bias associated with belief about allocation in randomized controlled trial; just like the intent-to-treat principle does not guarantee unbiased estimation under noncompliance, the blinded randomized trial as a golden standard may produce bias. They showed possible biases but did not assess how large the bias could be in different scenarios. In this paper, we examined their findings, and numerically assessed and compared the bias in treatment effect parameters by simulation under frequently encountered blinding scenarios, aiming to identify the most ideal blinding scenarios in practice. We conclude that Random Guess and Wishful Thinking (e.g., participants tend to believe they received treatment) are the most ideal blinding scenarios, incurring minimal bias. We also find some evidence that imperfect or partial blinding can be better than no blinding. |
topic |
Bias Blinding Blinding index Clinical trial |
url |
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S245186541530065X |
work_keys_str_mv |
AT heejungbang randomguessandwishfulthinkingarethebestblindingscenarios |
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1725304364033114112 |