Proper randomization reduces the chance of wasted biomedical research

Abstract:

In 1925, Ronald A. Fisher, in his book “Statistical Methods for Research Workers,” said "…to discriminate between those conclusions which ow from the nature of the observations themselves, and those which are due solely to faulty methods of estimation” (Fisher 1925), it could be understood as a prelude to what is known almost a century later as waste research (Ioannidis 2014). In another book, The Design of Experiments, Dr. Fisher gifts us this sentence “Randomisation properly carried out, … ensures that the estimates of error will take proper care of all such causes of different growth rates, and relieves the experimenter from the anxiety of considering and estimating the magnitude of the innumerable causes by which his data may be disturbed” (Fisher 1935). These two reections by R.A. Fisher have not been used properly by several researchers, but rather have been used as a sort of franchise or trademark for falsely improving the quality of their clinical trials. It has been pointed out that more than half are not randomized at all (Ioannidis 2014), although, in 1948, the rst randomized clinical trial (RCT) was conducted, which compared streptomycin versus placebo in people with pulmonary tuberculosis (Medical Research Council 1948). Despite this, there seems to be a deliberate ignorance for conducting trials without a proper randomization process; that is, only use the word “randomized” as a label, tag, or mark.

Año de publicación:

2017

Keywords:

Fuente:

google

scopus