A randomized controlled trial (RCT) is a form of scientific experiment used to control factors not under direct experimental control. 1 It is commonly used in medical research.

By randomly allocating participants among compared treatments, an RCT enables statistical control over influences of confounding variables.

Blinding

With blinding experiment, information which may influence the participants of the experiment is withheld until after the experiment is complete. Blinding can reduce biases like the observer bias and confirmation bias in data collection. 2

The terms single-blind, double-blind and triple-blind are commonly used to describe different types of blinding. Most often, single-blind studies blind patients to their treatment allocation, double-blind studies blind both patients and researchers to treatment allocations, and triple-blinded studies blind patients, researcher, and some other third party (such as a monitoring committee) to treatment allocations. However, the meaning of these terms can vary. 2

Footnotes

  1. Randomized controlled trial - Wikipedia

  2. Blinded experiment - Wikipedia 2