Chapter 1: Clinical Trials of Pain Treatment: Single Dose Trials

Question 3.3

If the morphine "positive control" had been omitted and no difference been shown between Drug X and placebo, what could one conclude from these data?

Treatments were placebo and Drug X. The figure shows that both of these treatments gave a modest amount of pain relief, less than one standard error different from each other.

Drug X is not an effective analgesic in this condition.

The result is inconclusive. One possibility is that Drug X is ineffective in this condition. An alternative possibility is that although Drug X would usually be effective in this condition, the methods of this particular study were flawed and therefore the study lacked "assay sensitivity."