Publications by authors named "Lucas Jurkovic"
Objectives: We set out to identify and count the types of reasons that are used in contemporary scholarship about the ethical permissibility of randomized trials, with the goal of developing a finer grained taxonomy of reasons than what is currently used by most participants in this literature. Because of its central role in justifying normative conclusions about randomized clinical trials (RCTs), we paid particular attention to both uses of the keyword "equipoise" and to the different concepts associated with it.
Methods: We conducted a scoping review to identify articles that included arguments that were likely to express reasons justifying RCTs.
Introduction: Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are widely viewed to generate the most reliable medical knowledge. However, RCTs are not always scientifically necessary and therefore not always ethical. Unfortunately, it is not clear when an RCT is not necessary or how this should be established.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: We have proposed that three scientific criteria are important for the ethical justification of randomized clinical trials (RCTs): (1) they should be designed around a clear hypothesis; (2) uncertainty should exist around that hypothesis; (3) that uncertainty should be as established through a systematic review. We hypothesized that the majority of a sample of recently published RCTs would not explicitly incorporate these criteria, therefore rendering them potentially unjustified on scientific grounds.
Study Design And Setting: Cross-sectional analysis of all RCTs published in the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2015.