Continuing the trend of providing blockchained online predictions that may come true in the next decades, today I will write about a fallacy in Blind and Double-Blind studies, and more specifically the aspect where the individual is assumed to have no way to know what is happening.
The prediction
Blind and Double Blind studies have been one of science's most valued tools for research. However, they are based on certain assumptions. These may seem to be 100% factual but will be proven inaccurate in the decades to come. This is contingent upon the validation of certain principles which are currently not well understood or acknowledged. In such an eventuality, new scientific protocols might evolve while old data might be considered less accurate, or discarded altogether.
One of the basic assumptions of blind / double blind studies is that an individual won't really know about something if their conscious mind isn't properly informed about it. But this assumption could be proven wrong due to a number of reasons.
Factors that could invalidate this assumption of “blindness”, are:
- A more widespread knowledge of scientific protocols among participants of studies. When participants know how studies are conducted and that themselves usually tend to get misleading information about the purpose of an experiment, they might suspect another reason for the same experiment (whether the actual or some of their own imagination). This might subtly alter their experience or actions. This could also happen in medicine due to knowledge of the placebo effect. For example, a patient which may be trying a new "experimental medicine” might suspect that what he's getting is simply a placebo. By noticing that there are no side effects associated with it (unlike strong chemical drugs which tend to produce validation of their presence through their adverse effects) the patient may subconsciously downgrade the effectiveness of the placebo compared to, say, a diarrhea-pill that is intended to cause an adverse reaction that reinforces one's belief in it. In this case, a placebo which is not 100% inert but produces some sort of side effect (for increasing the faith factor and the notion that it's not “just a sugar pill”), would be a more suitable benchmark for the performance of the actual pill - although changes in physiology could then throw-off the original measurement.
- The possible influence of the mind's real time pattern recognition. Just like an artificial intelligence neural network, our own mind has the ability to recognize patterns. It is actually very good at it - but the results of these connections are usually filtered out by the conscious mind. So the pattern recognition mechanism could possibly assess the purpose and nature of a study based on very subtle cues which should not be ordinarily and consciously understood. This pattern recognition will lodge the information in the subconscious and then the subconscious can subtly affect the behavior of the individual, influencing the outcome.
- The possible (?) existence of unconscious communication between the minds of humans which allow participants to possess a sublime understanding of what an experiment is about even if someone wants to withhold information through proxies. This could bypass the Double-Blind barrier.
- The possible (?) existence of an “energetic imprint” that accompanies a certain thought or action that could be potentially decoded by the subconscious mind of a participant, affecting the outcome.
- The possible (?) existence of a quantum mechanism that personalizes macroscopic reality for each quantum observer-individual. If we accept that there is no single objective reality but only observer-specific realities and infinite time-lines from an infinite field of possibilities, a lot of things could be affected, including studies in the macro-world.
All these factors could reduce the “solidness” of what is considered fairly solid scientific ground. The consequence would be the necessity to re-evaluate all those scientific findings that we currently consider as factual.