Further it can be questioned whether it is ethically correct to blind the participating GPs in a RCT, and therefore all the GPs in the current trial were given information and an opportunity to consent.
Similarly, when economic opportunities appear to abound, she said, people are often willing to turn a blind eye to ethically questionable practices.
Here, blinding is feasible as follows: GPs will be blinded in part (ethically) to their allocation status through the use of alternate terminology (i.e., avoiding the terms "intervention" and "control", and instead using 'Group A' or 'Group B'), thereby reducing performance bias.
They know that if they make the right noises about behaving ethically, their customers will turn a blind eye.
Will you make an effort to pay that little bit extra for an expensive and ethically produced handbag but turn a blind eye when buying cheaply produced underwear?
Wife, mother of 3 beautiful daughters, graduate, Wayne St. University, recently blind and proud of it, Advocate for the Blind, politically active, ethically motivated.
For example, double blinding (masking) is questionable both ethically and scientifically when performing surgical trials.
However, a double-blind study in oncology patients would be ethically and practically challenging as it would expose them to excessive burden: subcutaneous injections of a placebo drug in patients assigned to warfarin treatment and placebo tablets with sham INR monitoring requiring multiple unnecessary blood draws in patients assigned to long-term tinzaparin treatment.
We take it on blind faith that the organization is morally and ethically right, and working as hard as possible to use its money most effectively.
It was not possible reliably or ethically for the original investigators to have carried out efficient blinding in a surgical versus bedside clinical experiment.
Cluster randomization is ethically acceptable, but difficult to implement because RRS intervention cannot be blinded, and contamination between the two study arms would be unavoidable, as did actually occur in the MERIT trial, the only randomized study conducted since now on RRS [14].
