Question

A researcher tested a new medication designed to treat the symptoms of seasonal allergies. A random sample of 100 men working in farm fields in the southwest were recruited for the study. Subjects who worked in fruit orchards were given the actual new allergy medication while subjects who worked in vegetable farms were given a placebo pill. Subjects in each group were asked to take their medications each day for 90 days. At the end of 90 days, subjects were asked to complete a survey which asked questions about relief from allergy symptoms and possible side effects. The researcher compared survey responses from each group to find out if the new medication actually helped relieve allergy symptoms. Describe 3 weaknesses with the research study described above AND solutions you believe would fix those weaknesses.

Answer 1

Firstly required sample size needs to find as per our expected power of the test or effect size etc.

Proper random allocation is required. Here we provided placebo to vegetable farm workers and new medicine to fruit farm workers which is a big mistake. we have to provide new medicine to veg farmers and also to fruit farmers and similarly have to provide placebo to veg farmers and also fruit farmers so that we can remove the effect of field environment. And this has to be done in a randomized way so that no bias occurs.

One more point is blindness is important for patient and also for investigator. No body should know whether there are getting new medicine that is treatment or placebo that is control.