Twenty-six assumptions that have to be met if single random assignment experiments are to warrant "gold standard" status: A commentary on Deaton and Cartwright.

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

Who cites it

10 citing papers in PubMed.

1. Heterogeneity of Treatment Outcomes Across Therapists and Sites in a Randomized Multicentre Psychotherapy Trial.Clinical psychology & psychotherapy
   Trial
2. Preventing Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviors Among Youth: Integrative Data Analysis of Crossover Impacts of the Coping Power Preventive Intervention.JAACAP open · 2025
   Article
3. Evidence triangulation in health research.European journal of epidemiology · 2025
   Article
4. From Efficacy to Effectiveness: Evaluating Psychedelic Randomized Controlled Trials for Trustworthy Evidence-Based Policy and Practice.Pharmacology research & perspectives · 2025
   Review
5. The effectiveness of psychological interventions in elite sport: methodological issues and opportunities to gather evidence.Frontiers in psychology · 2025
   Article
6. Need for a nutrition-specific scientific paradigm for research quality improvement.BMJ nutrition, prevention & health · 2023
   Review
7. Common Methodological Problems in Randomized Controlled Trials of Preventive Interventions.Prevention science : the official journal of the Society for Prevention Research · 2021
   Review
8. A Graphical Catalog of Threats to Validity: Linking Social Science with Epidemiology.Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2020
   Article
9. Alternative causal inference methods in population health research: Evaluating tradeoffs and triangulating evidence.SSM - population health · 2020
   Article
10. Decision-based models of the implementation of interventions in systems of healthcare: Implementation outcomes and intervention effectiveness in complex service environments.PloS one · 2019
    Article

Corrections and comments

• Comment on
  Understanding and misunderstanding randomized controlled trials.2018

Authors and funding

1 author.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

Abstract

PubMed holds no abstract for this paper.

Indexed as