[Altavia]

Originally Posted by golfing eagles

Say WHAT????? I must not be reading the post correctly, because it makes no sense.

Most drug trials start with a sufficient number of volunteers that are randomized into a treatment group and a control (placebo) group, these groups are unknown to the researchers and the patients (double blinded). If the study is done at several different centers, all the better. The groups are matched generally for age, co-morbidities, sex, and habits. There are always participants that drop out for whatever reason. Patients are asked to reveal any potential "side effects", anything that is different in their lives. Then, the results are compared to the original proposition----such as does this vaccine prevent COVID or does this drug lower blood pressure, and how well.
What I just described is the Phase 3 trial, phase 1&2 is solely to determine dosing and potential side effects.

That's how this works, in theory. However, having run a bunch of these trials, I can state that the tendency among some participants is to tell the researchers what they want to hear, not what they actually are experiencing.

Exactly.

The people running the participant part of the trials were working 12 hour days 7 days a week to get things started as quickly as possible.

They gave us an app to report in any symptoms weekly.