It would be nicer if there were more randomization, but it would also be nicer if more information were extracted from the few people who are randomized. For example, I know someone who participated in an RCT of breastfeeding/formula. It was aimed at a specific (acute, adverse) infant outcome. I’m not sure it even looked at other infant metrics, but it certainly did not have long-term follow-up, not even at 5 years. Not only did the study make a big investment in persuading the subjects for such little measurement, but it is now impossible to do a better experiment, because RCTs of breastfeeding are now considered unethical because of the damage their null results do to the authors’ careers. (Similarly the Swedish and Australian twin registries are the right way to do twin studies.)
On the other hand, sometimes you can’t randomize and you’d like to know how well you can do correlational studies. If your employer is so enthusiastic about experiments, maybe it apply that enthusiasm to itself and do an experiment to see how well its employees can do observational analysis?
It would be nicer if there were more randomization, but it would also be nicer if more information were extracted from the few people who are randomized. For example, I know someone who participated in an RCT of breastfeeding/formula. It was aimed at a specific (acute, adverse) infant outcome. I’m not sure it even looked at other infant metrics, but it certainly did not have long-term follow-up, not even at 5 years. Not only did the study make a big investment in persuading the subjects for such little measurement, but it is now impossible to do a better experiment, because RCTs of breastfeeding are now considered unethical because of the damage their null results do to the authors’ careers. (Similarly the Swedish and Australian twin registries are the right way to do twin studies.)
On the other hand, sometimes you can’t randomize and you’d like to know how well you can do correlational studies. If your employer is so enthusiastic about experiments, maybe it apply that enthusiasm to itself and do an experiment to see how well its employees can do observational analysis?