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So we infect people with a deadly disease on purpose?
Only for him to call for another trial when the obviously good vaccines provably work.
I hate to say it, but this one I agree with RFK Jr on. You have to have a control group. If it’s ethically wrong to not treat with the standard of care then make the placebo group opt-in to placebo so they know they are not getting the current standard of care.
You can still do the compare vs current standard of care, but also need the placebo. Also diseases can evolve so re-comparing to baseline should be a must to make sure the current standard is actually helping like we think it does.
"Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'" - Isaac Asimov
This is the exact quote I was thinking of
If someone knows they receive the placebo, then that undermines it being a placebo. You already have a control group...people who choose not to take the vax.
Only if psychological effects could impact the result. That doesn’t apply with vaccines, does it?
There can be psychological side effects, such as pain or anxiety.
So not efficacy
I dont think so. Not sure what you are trying to say here.
Do you have any relevant credentials? Epidemiology? Virology? Public health?
The control group is the untreated population outside of the study. I'm not just speaking figuratively. The standard experimental design is to state the null hypothesis (i.e. the vaccine does not lower infection rates), and look for evidence to reject it. That evidence would be a statistically-significant rate of infection that's lower than the untreated population. Note that this explicitly defines a control group.
Really, too much is made of the placebo effect, such that it frequently turns into magical thinking, that a person can avoid illness with a healthy set of beliefs. "I don't believe the medical quacks who say I 'snapped my femur.' I'm going for a walk!" Nonsense. The double-blind RCT is good for, e.g., drugs that treat symptoms, the experience of which is subjective. It's not needed for objectively measurable conditions. Infectious disease agents have no respect for state of mind, and you get the disease whether you believe in it or not, as we saw during the pandemic.
this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2025
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