Episode Details

The double-blind randomized placebo-controlled trial feels like it's always existed. It hasn't. This episode traces how four separate inventions — control groups, placebos, blinding, and randomization — came together over roughly 250 years, often because someone was trying to debunk a charismatic healer. From a curtain in 1784 Paris to scurvy trials, homeopathy experiments, and the 1948 streptomycin trial that scarcity made ethically possible, we follow the skepticism engine that became medicine's shorthand for rigor — and the growing pushback as it spreads into economics, education, and A/B testing. Episode #990920 — open it directly at myweirdprompts.com/990920