You Carry Out a Clinical Trial to Test Whether a New

Multiple Choice

You carry out a clinical trial to test whether a new drug relieves the symptoms of arthritis better than a placebo.You have four groups of participants,all of whom have mildly painful arthritis (rated 6 on a scale of 1 to 10) .Each group receives a daily pill as follows: group 1 (control) ,placebo;group 2,15 mg;group 3,25 mg;group 4,50 mg.At the end of 2 weeks,participants in each group are asked to rate their pain on a scale of 1 to 10.The mean pain rating of the participants was 6.5 for the placebo,6.0 for 15 mg of the drug,4.5 for 25 mg of the drug,and 4.5 for 50 mg of the drug.What is your next step?

A) Invest in the drug company.
B) Conclude that the drug relieves arthritis pain.
C) Run a statistical analysis to determine if the differences are significant.
D) Conclude that the drug doesn't work very well (even the placebo group went down on the pain scale,and there was no difference in results between doses of 25 mg and 50 mg of the drug) .
E) Both investing in the drug company and concluding that the drug relieves arthritis pain.