Double Blind Trial

Subject – Science and Tech

Context – Year later, many participants of vaccine trials await certification.

Concept –

A type of clinical trial in which neither the participants nor the researcher knows which treatment or intervention participants are receiving until the clinical trial is over.
Double blind studies prevent bias when doctors evaluate patients’ outcomes. This improves reliability of clinical trial results.
The aim of this is to minimize the placebo effect and minimize bias.
This differs from other types of trials, such as simple blind trials where only the patients are unaware of the treatment they are receiving, whereas the doctors know.
Double-blind trials are a form of randomized trials and can be ‘upgraded’ to triple-blind trials, in which the statisticians or data clean-up personnel are also blind to treatments.