Fizz Laboratories, a pharmaceutical company, has developed a new pain-relief medication. Sixty patients suffering from arthritis and needing pain relief are available. Each patient will be treated and asked an hour later, "About what percentage of pain relief did you experience?"
- Why should Fizz not simply administer the new drug and record the patients' responses?
- Outline and design an experiment to compare the drug's effectiveness with that of aspirin and of a placebo.
- Should patients be told which drug they are receiving? How would this knowledge probably affect their reactions?
- If patients are not told which treatment they are receiving, the experiment is single-blind. Should this experiment be double-blind also? Explain.