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Randomized controlled trials and the flow of information: comment on Cartwright

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Abstract

The transferability problem—whether the results of an experiment will transfer to a treatment population—affects not only Randomized Controlled Trials but any type of study. The problem for any given type of study can also, potentially, be addressed to some degree through many different types of study. The transferability problem for a given RCT can be investigated further through another RCT, but the variables to use in the further experiment must be discovered. This suggests we could do better on the epistemological problem of transferability by promoting, in the repeated process of formulating public health guidelines, feedback loops of information from the implementation setting back to researchers who are defining new studies.

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Notes

  1. See Eberhardt and Sheines (2007)

  2. Evaluation of research studies requires, of course, some sophistication with statistics which pure practitioners and patient representatives may not have. For this reason the Scottish system has an Information Officer who gives tutorials about how to evaluate statistically presented evidence.

  3. It is a live issue between Bayesians and classical statisticians whether the process of choosing these groups by randomization has any benefit over choosing them by matching, that is, making sure for every (known) relevant trait, there are as many and like subjects in the control group as in the treatment group.

    Bayesians think the purpose of ruling out the possibilities in question is served equally well without a randomizing process to produce the similar profiles of the two groups. This dispute does not seem to me to make a difference to our questions here. So, when I say “RCT” I mean to be speaking also about Bayesian trials as far as possible.

  4. This is so under certain assumptions about the functional form of the causal structure, e.g., linearity, as discussed below.

  5. The same argument can be made, of course, for detracting factors.

Reference

  • Eberhardt, F., & Sheines, R. (2007). Interventions and causal inference. Philosophy of Science, 74, 981–995.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Group in Logic and the Methodology of Science, U.C, 314 Moses Hall #2390, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA

    Sherrilyn Roush

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  1. Sherrilyn Roush
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Correspondence to Sherrilyn Roush.

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Roush, S. Randomized controlled trials and the flow of information: comment on Cartwright. Philos Stud 143, 137–145 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-008-9320-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-008-9320-3

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