Thank you for the invitation to respond to a letter received about our article titled “Time to reflect on open-label placebos and their value for clinical practice.”Letter authors Ballou and Kube disagree with some of our criticisms of currently available research on open-label placebos (OLPs). [...]
The linkage of primary care, hospital and other health registry data is a global goal, and a consent-based approach is often used. Understanding the attitudes of why participants take part is important, yet little is known about reasons for non-participation. The ATHENA COVID-19 feasibility study [...]
Corporations have been developing tactics to undermine independent science for decades. In the 1950s, on learning of the damaging effects of tobacco on health, the tobacco industry used campaigns of criticism to defend their products and the substantial revenue they were generating. Corporations could effectively [...]
Although placebo-controlled trials are considered the gold standard for evaluating the efficacy of healthcare interventions, they can be perceived to be controversial and challenging to conduct for surgical treatments. The SUcceSS trial is the first placebo-controlled trial of lumbar decompression surgery for symptomatic lumbar canal [...]
Controlled trials are the principal means of investigating the effects of therapeutic and prophylactic interventions. They can be designed to avoid biases, and so provide clear and reliable insights into 'what works' under ideal circumstances. Controlled trials can, however, also generate evidence to inform decisions [...]
Basic science has found limited evidence from small studies of genuine positive effects on health and wellbeing outcomes, caused by positive treatment expectations, known as placebo effects.1 Naturally, many researchers and clinicians are curious about how to harness the placebo effect in clinical practice to improve [...]
The health and higher education sectors are increasingly using large administrative datasets for secondary purposes. Both sectors experience ethical challenges in the use of big data. This study identifies and explores how these two sectors are responding to these ethical challenges.
Outcome reporting bias in individual trials can compromise the validity of pooled estimates within systematic reviews. Recent strategies have attempted to address outcome reporting bias, which favours the full reporting of statistically significant outcomes over non-significant outcomes. We examined whether the association between full outcome [...]
Harms in clinical trials may be characterised by adverse events (AEs) and adverse reactions. Both terms refer to untoward medical occurrences in a trial participant, but the second term presumes causation and is reserved for events directly attributed to the investigational treatment. Harms reporting in [...]
While research oversight is necessary and desirable for some types and elements of research, we must also recognise that research review is itself a healthcare intervention and should therefore be subject to the same evidence-based requirements demanded of other healthcare interventions. Inefficiencies in any part of [...]