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Comments on “Randomization and the Design of Experiments” by P. Urbach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

O. Mayo
O. Mayo*
Affiliation:
Biometry Section, Waite Agricultural Research Institute, The University of Adelaide, South Australia
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Abstract

Urbach (1985) has concluded that the use of randomization in the design of clinical and agricultural trials is both inappropriate and ineffective. It is argued here that it is appropriate, as it eliminates the dependence of inference on the unknown precise physical model that underlies a set of observations, and effective, in that it is relatively simple to apply in practice compared with any competing method. Furthermore, it has been proven in practice.

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 54 , Issue 4 , December 1987 , pp. 592 - 596
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I thank T. W. Hancock, M. M. Morris and G. N. Wilkinson for helpful discussion, and I. Hacking for improvements to the manuscript.

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