Blinded by Science

The history of experimentation dates back to the 17th century when Francesco Redi conducted an experiment to prove that flies caused maggots on rotten food and not the food itself. He used controls in his experiment to isolate the variable he wanted to measure. However, sometimes controls are not enough, and personal biases can affect the outcome. Blinding is a technique used by researchers to avoid personal biases. This technique involves withholding information about the experiment’s details from researchers to prevent personal biases from influencing their findings. In medical experiments, double-blinding is used to prevent the placebo effect from confusing the results. Blinding and controlling variables can lead to more reliable evidence to support scientific theories.