The Pros And Cons Of Randomized-Controlled Trials

With the expansion and development of modern medicine, randomized-controlled trials are becoming more significant to statistics. Medical discovery and advancements over the past decades are leading down the pathway of stronger statistical studies using randomized-controlled trials. This technique was first used by the Medical Research Council in the 1940s to study whooping cough and was the solution to a statistical nightmare. The problem at the time was that if a publisher “wanted to rig the results to prove a treatment worked, he or she could preferentially give the treatment to the patients who were less sick, or give the older treatment to patients who were more sick” (5). Although there are significant limitations to RCTs, the concept of randomizing and controlling trials has several essential advantages that allow studies to pinpoint variables, apply to the real-world, and show stronger results. RCTs

“By randomizing, not only do you end up with a balance of sicker and healthier patients in the two groups, you also end up with a balance between things you don’t know about which may also have an impact on the patient’s health and therefore the outcome of the treatment” (6). This helps create stronger results because it is more likely that the results are due to the treatment and nothing else. In order to use RCTs effectively researchers have some evidence the treatment will work, allowing the calculation of an effect size that predicts the difference between the treatment group and the control group. The larger the measurable difference in outcomes, the stronger