On Sun, 27 May 2001, Rich Ulrich wrote:
> > I don't see how RTM can explain the average change in a prepost design
>
> - explanation: whole experiment is conducted on patients
> who are at their *worst* because the flare-up is what sent
> them to a doctor.
ok
> - I'm not sure what that last phrase means... "both ...."
> 30% or so of acutely depressed patients will get quite a bit better.
depressions are self-limiting; people get better unless they kill
themselves
> The experience of being in a research trial, by the way, seems
> to produce a placebo effect, according to what people have told me.
> (I think that careful scientists attribute that one to the extra time
> and attention given to those subjects.)
This is the historic psychological explanation. The interest in any
experiment is not a comparison with what the S's were before but
with whatt they would have been like absent the intervention ie with a
placebo (or alternate treatment)
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