ArticleThe British journal for the philosophy of science2019
The Confounding Question of Confounding Causes in Randomized Trials.
Article in The British journal for the philosophy of science, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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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.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Biochar improves the nutrient cycle in sandy-textured soils and increases crop yield: a systematic review.Environmental evidence · 2024Pooled it
- Overcoming Barriers to Exclusive Breastfeeding in Lao PDR: Social Transfer Intervention Randomised Controlled Trial.Nutrients · 2025Trial
- Trial
- Article
- Identification of potentially causative drugs associated with hypotension: A scoping review.Archiv der Pharmazie · 2025Article
- E-Synthesis: A Bayesian Framework for Causal Assessment in Pharmacosurveillance.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2019Article
- Vitamin D supplementation trials: Navigating the maze of unpredictable results.Perspectives in clinical researchReview
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
It is sometimes thought that randomized study group allocation is uniquely proficient at producing comparison groups that are evenly balanced for all confounding causes. Philosophers have argued that in real randomized controlled trials this balance assumption typically fails. But is the balance assumption an important ideal? I run a thought experiment, the CONFOUND study, to answer this question. I then suggest a new account of causal inference in ideal and real comparative group studies that helps clarify the roles of confounding variables and randomization. 1Confounders and Causes2The Balance Assumption3The CONFOUND Study 3.1CONFOUND 13.2CONFOUND 24Disjunction C and the Ideal Study 4.1The ultimate 'other cause': C4.2The ideal comparative group study4.3Required conditions for causal inference5Confounders as Causes, Confounders as Correlates6Summary.
Identifiers
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.