Effective blinding is definitely more involved if one’s both experimenter and test subject. It’s not impossible but an assistant would help a lot. Controlling for placebo effect does seem one of the big issues at this scale.
I could prep both some peptides and a control and have my girlfriend randomly pick one, although the peptides do have a detectable scent to them, so I don’t think this would be enough to actually blind me.
You could add some other scented ingredient to both peptide and control solutions. Rosewater would be a pleasant option. I wouldn’t expect this to interfere with any immune responses too much, but you should do some research to check if you decide to try this.
Effective blinding is definitely more involved if one’s both experimenter and test subject. It’s not impossible but an assistant would help a lot. Controlling for placebo effect does seem one of the big issues at this scale.
I could prep both some peptides and a control and have my girlfriend randomly pick one, although the peptides do have a detectable scent to them, so I don’t think this would be enough to actually blind me.
You could add some other scented ingredient to both peptide and control solutions. Rosewater would be a pleasant option. I wouldn’t expect this to interfere with any immune responses too much, but you should do some research to check if you decide to try this.