Question

1. Read the scenario and then answer the questions below:

Dr. Synapse has developed a new medication that they hope will be effective in treating migraine headaches. They expect that it will shorten the duration of a migraine if taken immediately following the first symptoms.

To test this, they develop an experiment. They get a large number of volunteers and randomly split them into two groups. Group A is given a placebo pill. Group B is given the new drug. Both groups are instructed to take the pill as soon as they notice symptoms of a migraine and then record the duration of the headache.

At the end, they plot the average headache duration for both groups and find that the average migraine duration for group A was shorter than that of group B.

Answer the following questions

1. Identify Dr. Synapse’s hypothesis
2. Identify Dr. Synapse’s prediction
3. Explain what a placebo is and why we had to give group A a placebo rather than giving them nothing and just asking them to record how long their migraines lasted.
4. Which group is the control group? Explain why control groups are necessary.
5. Do the data support the hypothesis? Explain your answer

Answer 1

1. Dr. Synapse's hypothesis- the new medication developed that is expected to shorten the duration of a migraine if taken immediately following the first symptoms. This hypothesis is futher tested and results are plotted.

2. Dr. Synapse's prediction- the new medication developed that is hoped to be effective in treating migraine headaches. Here this is just a prediction that will be further tested on the hypothesis given above.

3. A placebo is an inactive substance with no medical effects. It is a fake treatment. It is designed to seem exactly like the real treatment. They are used most commonly in clinical trials to determine the actual effectiveness of a new medication. The person receiving the placebo may or may not know that the pills are fake. Sometimes a person can know a treatment ia not real and still experience positive outcomes.

The groupA was given a placebo to compare the effectiveness of the new medication with their results. For the testing the efficacy of the new treatment placebo was used. Here two groups were taken and group A was given placebo and other one the drug. In this way the researcher can measure if the drug works by comparing how both groups react, therefore the placebo group was told to record their results.

4. The groupA with placebo is the control group.

Control groups are necessary for the clinical trials effectiveness. It is an essential part of any scientific research. Control groups helps in identifying whether a particular drug is suitable for further implementation based on their experimental results.

5. No the data do not support the given hypothesis. Because the hypothesis was that the drug would shorten the duration of migraine headaches, but this result was observed in group A placebo controlled groups. Whereas the drug induced group didn't receive the expected results.