Chapter 4.2, Problem 71E

To determine

To explain what this means and how lack of blindness could bias the reported results.

Explanation of Solution

In the question it is given an experiment that claimed to show that meditation lowers anxiety. The subjects know which treatment they received while the psychologists also know which treatment were received by which subjects and thus there was no blinding in the study whatsoever. The lack of blindness could be bias the reported results because the results could be influenced by the placebo effect while there is no group that received a placebo such that we could compare with this group and thus we cannot take in to account the placebo effect. Thus the result could be affected by the patients’’ belief in the treatment.