You've developed a protein drink that you think cures arthritis. To test it, you find 200 volunteers (100 men and 100 women) and
test them to measure the amount of discomfort they feel from their arthritis. Then you give the treatment to half the subjects and a placebo to the others. You then test them all at regular intervals and measure their improvement. You find that the subjects who received the treatment show marked improvement. The people performing the tests are not told that they're studying an arthritis medication. You excitedly report your findings in an infomercial that is seen by millions of people, and sales skyrocket. But were the test results truly useful for determining the effectiveness of the treatment? Why or why not? A. No, there was no control.
B. Yes, it's a blind-study.
C. Yes, it's a valid before-and-after design.
D. Can't be determined without knowing how much improvement was measured.
E. No, there was no replication.
Despite it was observed that the subjects who received treatment show marked improvement, the test results are not truly useful for determining the effectiveness of the treatment because there was no control group with which to analyze/compare the marked improvement of the subjects with: the effectiveness of the treatment would have been more valid if there was a control group that didn’t take treatment.
