10 Evaluating Clinical Trials

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10 Evaluating Clinical Trials

Key Vocabulary

• control• data• evidence• hypothesis• qualitative• quantitative• reproducible• sample size

• trade-offs• variable

10 Evaluating Clinical Trials

Read the introduction and look for key ideas

10 Evaluating Clinical Trials

Which proposals have an experimental design worth funding?

10 Evaluating Clinical Trials

Complete the procedure and record your data

10 Evaluating Clinical Trials

Analysis question 1

Which study—1 through 4—had the best experimental design? Explain.

10 Evaluating Clinical Trials

Analysis question 2

Discuss your funding recommendations with your group. Do you agree on which studies, if any, should be funded? What other concerns doyou have?

10 Evaluating Clinical Trials

Analysis question 3

You find out that NIH has only enough money to fund one study and plans to fund the best one. Explain which study you would fund. Support your answer with evidence and identify the trade-offs of your decision. Hint: To write a complete answer, first state your opinion. Provide two or more pieces of evidence that support your opinion. Then consider all sides of the issue and identify the trade-offs of your decision.

10 Evaluating Clinical Trials

SCORING GUIDES: Recognizing Relevant Evidence and Evidence and Trade-OffsRecognizing Relevant Evidence Evidence and Trade-Offs

10 Evaluating Clinical Trials

Discussion web

Discussion Web: Evaluating Clinical Trials

10 Evaluating Clinical Trials

Analysis question 4

Choose one of the studies. Review your comments about its experimental design and think about how the study could be improved. Rewrite the study to include your recommendations for improving the quality of the

experiment.

10 Evaluating Clinical Trials

Analysis question 5

Reflection: Based on what you have learned in this unit, how do you solve problems? How do scientists solve problems? Compare your methods to scientists’ methods and describe the similarities and differences between them.

10 Evaluating Clinical Trials

Which proposals have an experimental design worth funding?

10 Evaluating Clinical Trials

Key vocabulary definitions

Control - A standard of comparison for checking or verifying the results of an experiment. In the parallel experiment a single variable is changed. The results are compared to the control in order to see if the variable had any effect.

Data - Factual information derived from scientific

experiments.

10 Evaluating Clinical Trials

Key vocabulary definitions

Evidence - Observations or data to support a statement, hypothesis, or point of view.

Hypothesis - A possible explanation for observations, facts, or events, that may be tested, verified, or answered by further investigation.

10 Evaluating Clinical Trials

Key vocabulary definitions

Qualitative - Information that is concerned with qualities, not numbers or quantities.

Quantitative - Information that is based on numerical measurements.

Reproducible - Capable of being recreated and repeated.

10 Evaluating Clinical Trials

Key vocabulary definitions

Sample size - The number of observations in a sample.

10 Evaluating Clinical Trials

Key vocabulary definitions

Trade-offs - Potential outcome of any type of decision or action that involves some form of compromise, especially when each of the possible choices involves both advantages and disadvantages. When one option is chosen over another during a decision-making process, any desired outcome that must be given up is called a trade-off.

10 Evaluating Clinical Trials

Key vocabulary definitions

Variable - The only factor in a scientific experiment that is different from the control group.

10 Evaluating Clinical Trials

Analyze

Bring in news articles that describe scientific studies involving people. Analyze the studies according to the procedures you used in this activity. What issues do scientists face when studying people scientifically?