Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. A blind or blinded experiment is a scientific experiment where some of the persons involved are prevented from knowing certain information that might lead to conscious or unconscious bias on their part, invalidating the results. For example, when asking consumers to compare the tastes of different brands of a product, the identities of the latter should be concealed — otherwise consumers will generally tend to prefer the brand they are familiar with. Similarly, when evaluating the effectiveness of a medical drug, both the patients and the doctors who administer the drug may be kept in the dark about the dosage being applied in each case — to forestall any chance of a placebo effect, observer bias, or conscious deception. Blinding can be imposed on researchers, technicians, subjects, funders, or any combination of them. The opposite of a blind trial is an open trial. Blind experiments are an important tool of the scientific method, in many fields of research — from medicine, forensics, psychology and the social sciences, to basic sciences such as physics and biology and to market research.

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