Why There's No Cause to Randomize
@article{Worrall2007WhyTN, title={Why There's No Cause to Randomize}, author={John Worrall}, journal={The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science}, year={2007}, volume={58}, pages={451 - 488} }
The evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) is widely regarded as supplying the ‘gold standard’ in medicine—we may sometimes have to settle for other forms of evidence, but this is always epistemically second-best. But how well justified is the epistemic claim about the superiority of RCTs? This paper adds to my earlier (predominantly negative) analyses of the claims produced in favour of the idea that randomization plays a uniquely privileged epistemic role, by closely inspecting…
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