SOURCES OF UNCERTAINTY IN STUDIES OF DRUGS AFFECTING MOOD, MENTATION OR ACTIVITY
ERWIN L. LINN PH.D.1
1 Laboratory of Socio-environmental Studies, National Institute of Mental Health, U. S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Bethesda 14, Md.
Research on the effect of drugs, particularly those affecting mood, mentation, and activity, is complicated by a number of obscuring factors. Many of these complications seem inevitable in terms of the nature of the drugs or the available subjects. Until some of these complicating factors can be documented as inconsequential, investigators must try to randomize their potential effects or to take explicit account of them in the research design.
