Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T20:25:07.260Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Randomization and the Design of Experiments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Peter Urbach*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, London School of Economics

Abstract

In clinical and agricultural trials, there is the danger that an experimental outcome appears to arise from the causal process or treatment one is interested in when, in reality, it was produced by some extraneous variation in the experimental conditions. The remedy prescribed by classical statisticians involves the procedure of randomization, whose effectiveness and appropriateness is criticized. An alternative, Bayesian analysis of experimental design, is shown, on the other hand, to provide a coherent and intuitively satisfactory solution to the problem.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I wish to thank Lucien Foldes, Steve Gould, Colin Howson, and especially Jon Dorling for their many helpful criticisms and suggestions for the improvement of earlier versions of this paper.

References

Altman, D. G.; Gore, S. M.; Gardner, M. J.; and Pocock, S. J. (1983), “Statistical Guidelines for Contributors to Medical Journals,” British Medical Journal 286: 1489–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cohen, L. J., and Hesse, M. (eds.) (1980), Applications of Inductive Logic. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Dorling, J. (1980), “A Personalist Analysis of Statistical Hypotheses and Some Other Rejoinders to Giere's Anti-Positivist Metaphysics,” in Cohen and Hesse (1980) pp. 271–81.Google Scholar
Feiblman, J. K. (1972), Scientific Method. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fisher, R. A. (1947), The Design of Experiments. 4th edition. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd.Google Scholar
Fisher, R. A. (1956), Statistical Methods and Scientific Inference. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd.Google Scholar
Gehan, E. A., and Freireich, E. J. (1974), “Non-Randomized Controls in Cancer Clinical Trials,” The New England Journal of Medicine 290: 198204.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Friedman, L. M.; Furberg, C. D.; and De Mets, D. L. (1981), Fundamentals of Clinical Trials. Boston: John Wright, PSG Inc.Google Scholar
Gore, S. M. (1981), “Assessing Clinical Trials—Why Randomize?”, British Medical Journal, 282, 1958–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kempthorne, O. (1966), “Some Aspects of Experimental Inference,” American Statistical Journal: 1134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kempthorne, O. (1979), The Design and Analysis of Experiments. Huntington, New York: Robert E. Krieger.Google Scholar
Kendall, M. G., and Stuart, A. (1963), The Advanced Theory of Statistics. Volumes 2 and 3. 2nd edition. London: Charles Griffin and Company Limited.Google Scholar
Kyburg, H. E., Jr, . (1961), Probability and the Logic of Rational Belief. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Kyburg, H. E., Jr, . (1980), “Inductive Logic and Experimental Design” in Cohen and Hesse (1980), pp. 90101.Google Scholar
Levi, I. (1980), The Enterprise of Knowledge. Cambridge: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Peto, R. (1978), “Clinical Trial Methodology,” in Proceedings of the International Meeting on Comparative Therapeutic Trials. Paris: Springer International.Google Scholar
Rubin, D. B. (1978), “Bayesian Inference for Causal Effects: The Role of Randomization,” The Annals of Statistics 6: 3458.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Savage, L. J.; Barnard, G. A.; and Cox, D. R. (eds.) (1962), The Foundations of Statistical Inference. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.Google Scholar
Seidenfeld, T. (1981), “Levi on the Dogma of Randomization in Experiments,” in Profiles: Henry E. Kyburg, Jr. & Isaac Levi, R. J. Bogdan (ed.). D. Reidel Publishing Company.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snedecor, G. W., and Cochran, W. G. (1967), Statistical Methods. 6th edition. Ames, Iowa: The Iowa State University Press.Google Scholar
Suppes, P. (1983), “Arguments for randomizing,” in PSA 1982, pp. 464–75.Google Scholar
Yates, F. (1939), “The Comparative Advantages of Systematic and Randomized Arrangements in the Design of Agricultural and Biological Experiments,” Biometrika 30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar