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Blinding as a Solution to Bias

Strengthening Biomedical Science, Forensic Science, and Law

By: Robertson, Kesselheim

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Hardcover | 3 February 2016 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Hardcover
390 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
23.5 x 19.05 x 2.24

Hardcover

RRP $170.95

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What information should jurors have during court proceedings to render a just decision? Should politicians know who is donating money to their campaigns? Will scientists draw biased conclusions about drug efficacy when they know more about the patient or study population? The potential for bias in decision-making by physicians, lawyers, politicians, and scientists has been recognized for hundreds of years and drawn attention from media and scholars seeking to understand the role that conflicts of interests and other psychological processes play. However, commonly proposed solutions to biased decision-making, such as transparency (disclosing conflicts) or exclusion (avoiding conflicts) do not directly solve the underlying problem of bias and may have unintended consequences.

Blinding As A Solution To Bias: Strengthening Biomedical Science, Forensic Science, and Law, Robertson and Kesselheim bring together a renowned group of interdisciplinary scholars to consider another way to reduce the risk of biased decision-making: blinding. What are the advantages and limitations of blinding? How can we quantify the biases in unblinded research? Can we develop new ways to blind decision-makers? What are the ethical problems with withholding information from decision-makers in the course of blinding? How can blinding be adapted to legal and scientific procedures and in institutions not previously open to this approach? Fundamentally, these sorts of questions-about who needs to know what-open new doors of inquiry for the design of scientific research studies, regulatory institutions, and courts. The volume consists of three main parts, drawing upon leading authors who bring an exceedingly diverse range of skills and methodologies, including: forensic sciences, medicine, law, philosophy, economics, psychology, sociology and statistics.

Introduces readers to the primary policy issue this book seeks to address: biased decision-making.
Provides a focus on blinding as a solution to bias, which has applicability in many domains.
Traces the development of blinding as a solution to bias, and explores the different ways blinding has been employed.
Includes case studies to explore particular uses of blinding for statisticians, radiologists, and fingerprint examiners, and whether the jurors and judges who rely upon them will value and understand blinding.

Industry Reviews

"Since the time of Ben Franklin, scientists have recognized the power of blinding to help us see the world more objectively. This collection of essays explores the complicated psychology of blinding, while making a compelling case that we have yet to fully embrace the power of invisibility." --Peter A. Ubel, University Professor, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University "Robertson and Kesselheim's book provides an authoritative look at the practice of blinding and how it can be used to improve our health care and legal systems. It is a wonderful resource for medical students, policymakers, and anyone else interested in studying conflicts of interest and helping address bias in clinical practice and biomedical research." --Jerry Avorn, Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School "This extraordinary collection of scholars takes on in exhaustive detail one of the foundational questions of public policy - under what circumstances are decisions improved by limiting decisionmakers' access to information. From orchestra auditions and secret ballots to blinded trials and the parole evidence rule, the examples discussed in in this volume's broad-ranging contributions illuminate when veils of ignorance should be embraced." --Ian Ayres, Professor, Yale Law School

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