placebo group
Sham treatment recipients
A placebo group is the set of participants in a clinical trial who receive an inactive treatment—a sugar pill, saline injection, or sham procedure—rather than the drug or intervention being tested.
Comparing outcomes between the placebo group and the treatment group reveals whether the intervention works beyond the psychological effects of simply receiving care.
The placebo group showed a 15% improvement, but the drug group improved by 40%.
- clinical trialHuman subject research experiment
- gold standardMeasure of ultimate quality
- sugar pillInactive substitute for medicine
- blind studyTrial concealing group assignments
- double-blindNeither tester nor tested knows
experiment · sham · inert · treatment · subjects · participants · randomized · clinical research · efficacy · baseline · comparison · dummy · effect · nocebo effect · mind over matter · outcome · medical · research
- Research Groupspanel, cohort, respondents, participants, subjects
- research subjectssubject, participant, test subject, experimental subject, volunteer
- test subjectshuman subjects, lab rats, lab mice, guinea pigs, participants
- clinical trialsclinical trial, double-blind, double blind, trial, phase 1
- data typesint, integer, float, char, bool
- baselinesstarting point, reference point, initial assessment, pretest, pre-test
placebo, group, place, placement, displace, displacement, misplace, replace, replacement