La Caze Adam
School of Pharmacy, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia.
J Med Philos. 2013 Aug;38(4):352-68. doi: 10.1093/jmp/jht028.
A number of arguments have shown that randomization is not essential in experimental design. Scientific conclusions can be drawn on data from experimental designs that do not involve randomization. John Worrall has recently taken proponents of randomized studies to task for suggesting otherwise. In doing so, however, Worrall makes an additional claim: randomized interventional studies are epistemologically equivalent to observational studies, providing the experimental groups are comparable according to background knowledge. I argue against this claim. In the context of testing the efficacy of drug therapies, well-designed interventional studies are epistemologically superior to well-designed observational studies because they have the capacity to avoid a type of selection bias. Although arguments for interventional studies are present in the medical literature, these arguments are too often presented as an argument for randomization. Randomization in interventional studies is defended on Bayesian grounds.
许多论据表明，随机化在实验设计中并非必不可少。可以从不涉及随机化的实验设计数据中得出科学结论。约翰·沃拉尔最近指责随机研究的支持者提出了相反的观点。然而，在这样做的过程中，沃拉尔还提出了一个额外的主张：随机干预研究在认识论上等同于观察性研究，前提是根据背景知识实验组具有可比性。我反对这一主张。在测试药物疗法疗效的背景下，精心设计的干预性研究在认识论上优于精心设计的观察性研究，因为它们有能力避免一种选择偏差。尽管医学文献中存在支持干预性研究的论据，但这些论据往往被表述为支持随机化的论据。干预性研究中的随机化是基于贝叶斯理论进行辩护的。
