Journal of Clinical Trials
Open Access

Department of Medicine, University of Montreal, Montreal, Canada

Publications

• Commentary   
  The Ten Things we Always Wanted to Know about Randomised Controlled Trials but were Afraid to Ask
  Author(s): Jacques Lelorier*
  
  Randomized Controlled Trials are increasingly popular in the social sciences, not only in medicine. We argue that the lay public, and sometimes researchers, put too much trust in randomized controlled trials over other methods of investigation. Contrary to frequent claims in the applied literature, randomization does not equalize everything other than the treatment in the treatment and control groups, it does not automatically deliver a precise estimate of the average treatment effect, and it does not relieve us of the need to think about (observed or unobserved) covariates. Finding out whether an estimate was generated by chance is more difficult than commonly believed... View More»
  DOI: 10.35248/2167-0870.22.S16.001

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