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    RCTs are not guaranteed to deliver reliable results — Carmelics
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    RCTs are not guaranteed to deliver reliable results

    SkepticismTruth & Knowledge
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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.RCTs assume treatment effects are homogeneous across populations, but Cartwright (2007) shows effect heterogeneity undermines external validity.
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    • 2.A result reliable within a trial population may be systematically unreliable when generalized to clinical practice contexts.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Worrall (2007) demonstrates that randomization does not control for unknown confounders in any single trial, only in expectation across many trials.
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    • 2.A method that controls confounds only probabilistically across repetitions cannot guarantee reliability for any particular RCT result.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.The label 'gold standard' suggests RCTs are guaranteed to deliver reliable results
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    • 2.Philosophers of medicine have argued that the claim RCTs are guaranteed to deliver reliable results does not hold to scrutiny
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    Related

    A method that controls confounds only probabilistically across repetitions canno...A result reliable within a trial population may be systematically unreliable whe...Philosophers of medicine have argued that the claim RCTs are guaranteed to deliv...RCTs assume treatment effects are homogeneous across populations, but Cartwright...
    +2 moreShow less
    The label 'gold standard' suggests RCTs are guaranteed to deliver reliable resul...Worrall (2007) demonstrates that randomization does not control for unknown conf...

    Similar

    ABD1 is not reliable even if the best explanation is usually true when...78%Philosophers of medicine have argued that the claim RCTs are guarantee...77%Guessing is reliable in the actual world for a lucky guesser but not n...76%Knowledge should not be expected to require reliability76%

    Source

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    SEP: medicine
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    No one denies that RCTs are powerful experimental designs—and that their power stems from the ability to control numerous sources of bias and confounding. However, to refer to RCTs as the “gold standard” of evidence suggests that they are more. Specifically, one may be led to assume that RCTs are necessary for reliable causal inference or that RCTs are guaranteed to deliver reliable results. A number of philosophers of medicine have in the past decade or so argued that these stronger claims do n
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit