Why Do People Enter Research Trials?

This question probably isn't one that's tops on your list of what you'd like to know, but it is an interesting one for me and for you. Let's consider some of the things research tells us.

For one thing, there's that pesky Type A Personality that we keep hearing about. What do you know about this other than it's supposed to be a type of personality that doesn't know when to stop striving for something. It's the hard-driving executive, the super surgeon and who knows who else. Correct? Well, from what I remember of my experimental psych courses, that's not quite the full truth. Many of the people in this and other experiments were poorly chosen and, as a result, the research is flawed. This particular research didn't include women, so how can we talk about a personality type when we are only considering men?

Another major research project tried to look at something called "obedience to authority," but here too they excluded a lot of women because they just found the results too confusing. In other words, they didn't get the result they wanted.

Whenever you see anything about research trials, ask yourself, "Who participated in it" and then think about what that might mean to you in terms of the result.

Believe it or not, there are people in this country who are professional research subjects and they go from clinical trial to clinical trial across the country. They know what they have to do in order to enter a trial and it's a job for them. Yes, people do get paid to be in some clinical trials. In one I saw, a man lived in a very nice apartment in the research lab for three months. Of course, he was videotaped constantly and had to sleep with a wired cap on his head, but he didn't seem to mind. Was he representative of you and me in terms of his sleep pattern? I don't know.

Related Topics:Clinical Trials: Cutting-Edge Care, Clinical Trials and Sleep Disorders

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