Stat 1001

Winter 1998
Geyer

Homework 1
Problem 2.3
No, they were wrong. No valid conclusion can be drawn from these numbers.
The whole point of the randomized controlled experiment is that the \consent"
group (treatment plus control) and the \no consent" group are not comparable.
They dier in many ways. Comparing these two groups, as this problem does,
is a mistake.
Moreover, the idea that signing a consent form causes children to get polio is
looney. It is clear from both sides of Table 1 that there was a lower incidence of
polio in the \no consent" group, but whatever the reasons for this|whether that
group was more auent, less urban, got better medical care, exercised more,
or anything else|it is very hard to believe that nonconsent by itself protects
against polio.

Problem 2.5
The double blind trial is better. The dierence in the rst trial may have been
due to the doctors doing the evaluations making the results come out the way
they wanted, not necessarily by conscious cheating, it could have been entirely
unconscious bias.

Problem 2.6
That's the placebo eect. Perhaps it took a while to work.
The authors of the book (in the instructor's manual) suggest the following
answer: maybe patients who didn't improve in the rst half concluded they were
in the group getting placebo followed by zinc sulfate and therefore expected to
improve in the second half, and did, by the placebo eect. But this assumes
all the patients were optimists (perhaps true, who knows?). Why didn't they
assume they were in the placebo-placebo group?
Whether this particular explanation is correct or not, the general explanation
of \placebo eect" is right.

Problem 2.9
(a) False. The experiments came to the opposite conclusion from the observa-
tional studies: the vitamin supplements do not prevent cancer and may actually
cause cancer.

1
(b) True. This is the dierence between controlled experiments and observa-
tional studies.
(c) False. Controlled experiments cannot suer from confounding. That's why
we do controlled experiments.
The controlled experiments could have reached the wrong conclusion for a
very dierent reason. The \large doses of vitamin supplements" given in the
controlled experiments may not have been equivalent to the diets of the subjects
in the observational studies. Something besides vitamins in those diets could
prevent cancer. But we shouldn't give that theory any credence until it is
conrmed by a controlled experiment.

Problem 2.11
(a) The treatment group is those who completed boot camp, the control group
is all other prisoners.
(b) This is an observational study. The treatment group were volunteers, self-
selected, not chosen by the experimenters.
(c) False.
An observational study cannot be conclusive. The apparent treatment
eect my be due to confounding.