Another Article Takes the Sheen off RCTs
[From the article, “Why all randomised controlled trials produce biased results”, by Alexander Krauss, recently published in Annals of Medicine]
“Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are commonly viewed as the best research method to inform public health and social policy. Usually they are thought of as providing the most rigorous evidence of a treatment’s effectiveness without strong assumptions, biases and limitations.”
“This is the first study to examine that hypothesis by assessing the 10 most cited RCT studies worldwide.”
“…This study shows that these world-leading RCTs that have influenced policy produce biased results by illustrating that participants’ background traits that affect outcomes are often poorly distributed between trial groups, that the trials often neglect alternative factors contributing to their main reported outcome and, among many other issues, that the trials are often only partially blinded or unblinded. The study here also identifies a number of novel and important assumptions, biases and limitations not yet thoroughly discussed in existing studies that arise when designing, implementing and analysing trials.”
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The Replication Network 
Please note: while there are many valid discussions to be had regarding the design, conduct, and execution of RCT’s, the article discussed here is a disaster and several of the statements are just outright wrong. This article is not something to be taken as a serious discussion of RCT’s.
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Upon reflection, we agree and we should not have featured that article in a post.
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