Trust and Mistrust in the Marketplace: Statistics and Clinical Research,1945–1960

Rapport des Commissaires chargés par le Roi, de l'examen du magnetisme animal [1784] (Paris, 1980), 23, 36. This and other studies are discussed in Kaptchuk Ted J. , “Intentional ignorance: A history of blind assessment and placebo controls in medicine”, Bulletin of the history of medicine, lxxii (1998), 389–433, to which I am greatly indebted. See also Darnton Robert , Mesmerism and the end of Enlightenment in France (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), 62–64, but a fuller cultural and social history of these sceptical practices is much needed.

Rapport des Commissaires (ref. 1), 30–31.

Kaptchuk , “Intentional ignorance” (ref. 1). See also Haas H. Fink H. Hartfelder G. , “The placebo problem”, Psychopharmacology Service Center bulletin, ii (1962), 1–65.

Lilienfeld Abraham , “Ceteris paribus: The evolution of the clinical trial”, Bulletin of the history of medicine, lvi (1982), 1–18; Fagot-Largeault Anne , “Les origines de la notion d'essai contrôlé randomisé en médecine”, Les procédures de preuve sous le regard de l'historien des sciences et des techniques (Cahiers d'histoire et de philosophie des sciences, 1991), 281–300.

Adorno Theodor W. Albert Hans Dahrendorf Ralf Habermas Jürgen Pilot Harald Popper Karl R. , The positivist dispute in German sociology (London, 1976); Gigerenzer Gerd Swijtink Zeno Porter Theodore Daston Lorraine Beatty John Krüger Lorenz , The empire of chance: How probability changed science and everyday life (Cambridge, 1989). For medicine, see Reiser Stanley Joel , Medicine and the reign of technology (Cambridge, 1978).

See especially Porter Theodore M. , Trust in numbers: The pursuit of objectivity in science and public life (Princeton, 1995); Desrosières Alain , The politics of large numbers: A history of statistical reasoning (Cambridge, Mass., 1998).

See Daston Lorraine , “Objectivity and the escape from perspective”, Social studies of science, xxii (1992), 597–618; Daston Lorraine Galison Peter , “The image of objectivity”, Representations, xl (1992), 81–128.

Shapin Steven , A social history of truth: Civility and science in seventeenth-century England (Chicago, 1994).

Porter , Trust in numbers (ref. 6).

Shapin Steven , “The house of experiment in seventeenth century England”, Isis, lxxix (1988), 363–404; Shapin , Social history of truth (ref. 8), 355–407.

The point is Daston's, in “Objectivity and escape from perspective” (ref. 7), 610–11; Porter's Trust in numbers (ref. 6) is full of similar examples but he, like Daston, places the emphasis on the trust placed in new procedures rather than on the social identity of those mistrusted.

Pocock J. G. A. , “Languages and their implications: The transformation of the study of political thought”, in idem, Politics, language and time: Essays on political thought and history (New York, 1973), 3–41; Skinner Quentin , “Meaning and understanding in the history of ideas”, in Tully James (ed.), Meaning and context: Quentin Skinner and his critics (Princeton, 1988); Brown JoAnne , The definition of a profession: The authority of metaphor in the history of intelligence testing, 1890–1930 (Princeton, 1992). I am indebted to Professor Brown for many conversations on the historical analysis of language. For recent examples from the history of medicine, see Marks Harry M. , “Revisiting ‘The origins of compulsory drug prescriptions’”, American journal of public health, lxxxv (1995), 109–15; Harley David , “Rhetoric and the social construction of healing”, Social history of medicine, xii (1999), 407–36.

Marks Harry M. , The progress of experiment: Science and therapeutic reform in the United States, 1900–1990 (Cambridge, 1997).

Ibid., 23–41, for a fuller account of the Council's activities.

Stewart F. E. , “Proposed National Bureau of Materia Medica”, Journal of the American Medical Association [JAMA], xxxvi (1901), 1175–8, p. 1177.

Simmons George H. , “The commercial domination of therapeutics and the movement for reform”, JAMA, xlviii (1907), 1645–53, p. 1645.

Hewlett Albion Walter , “The cooperation between pharmacology and therapeutics”, JAMA, lix (1917), 1123–4. The phrase “merciless quest for errors” is Torald Sollman's from “Evaluation of therapeutic remedies in the hospital”, JAMA, xciv (1930), 1279–81, p. 1280. On experimental practices in this era, see Marks , Progress of experiment (ref. 13), esp. pp. 28–37, 47–70.

Sollman Torald , “Experimental therapeutics”, JAMA, lviii (1912), 242–4, p. 242.

Rowntree L. G. , “The role and development of drug therapy”, JAMA, lxxvii (1921), 1061–5, p. 1064. See also Wilbert W. I. , “Materia medica and pharmacy in hospital practice”, JAMA, xlix (1920), 1659–61, p. 1661; Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry, Bulletin, xlvi (1927), 222; Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry, Bulletin, 1 (1929), 325, 414.

Parascandola John , The development of American pharmacology: John J. Abel and the shaping of a discipline (Baltimore, 1992), 103–25; Swann John P. , Academic scientists and the pharmaceutical industry: Cooperative research in twentieth-century America (Baltimore, 1988).

See Smith Austin , “Some practical aspects of research”, in Medical research: A symposium, ed. by Smith Austin (Philadelphia, 1946), 28–47, esp. pp. 33–35; Lasagna Louis , “The drug industry and American medicine”, Journal of chronic diseases, vii (1958), 440–3, pp. 440–1.

Dowling Harry F. , “Twixt the cup and lip”, JAMA, clxv (1957), 657–61, p. 659. Dowling also complains of the undue influence of sales staff in assessing new drugs (ibid., 660).

See Whorton James , ‘“Antibiotic abandon’: The resurgence of therapeutic rationalism”, in Parascandola John (ed.), The history of antibiotics: A symposium (Madison, Wisc., 1980), 125–36; Silverman William A. , Retrolental fibroplasia: A modern parable (New York, 1980), 69–89; Swazey Judith P. , Chlorpromazine in psychiatry: A study of therapeutic innovation (Cambridge, Mass., 1974).

Sheps Mindel C. , “The clinical value of drugs: Sources of evidence”, American journal of public health, li (1961), 647–54, pp. 650–1.

Lasagna Louis , “The controlled clinical trial: Theory and practice”, Journal of chronic diseases, i (1955), 353–67, p. 353.

Lasagna Louis , “Gripesmanship: A positive approach”, Journal of chronic diseases, x (1959), 459–68, p. 466.

Joseph Earle Moore to Thomas Parran, Jr, 3 January 1932, Folder 228, Thomas Parran, Jr papers, University of Pittsburgh. For a discussion of the tensions between democracy and expertise in prewar therapeutic research, see Marks , Progress of experiment (ref. 13), 30–32, 57–58, 65–67.

Bauer Walter , Therapeutic Trial Committee, Subcommittee on Steroids and Cancer, Minutes (9 June 1952), 9, American Medical Association Archives, Chicago, Ill.

Mainland Donald , “Statistics in clinical research: Some general principles”, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, lii (1950), 922–30, p. 927. For a further discussion of issues in patient recruitment, see Marks , Progress of experiment (ref. 13), 155–8.

Marshall E. K. Merrell Margaret , “Clinical therapeutic trial of a new drug”, Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, lxxxv (1949), 221–30; Reid , “Statistics in clinical research” (ref. 29), Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, lii (1950), 931–4; Mainland Donald , “The modern method of clinical trial”, Methods in medical research, vi (1954), 152–8.

On pre-Fisherian use of randomization, see Hacking Ian , “Telepathy: The origins of randomization in the design of experiments”, Isis, lxxix (1988), 427–51; Dehue Trudy , “Deception, efficiency, and random groups: Psychology and the gradual origination of the random group design”, Isis, lxxxviii (1997), 653–73. On the contrast between Fisherian and medical ideas about randomization, see Marks , Progress of experiment (ref. 13), 141–5.

Hill A. Bradford , “Assessment of therapeutic trials”, Transactions of the Medical Society of London, lxviii (1953), 128–44, p. 132.

Marshall Merrell , “Clinical therapeutic trial of a new drug” (ref. 30), 224. See also Mainland , “Statistics in clinical research” (ref. 29), 925.

Lasagna , “The controlled clinical trial” (ref. 25), 357–4. For other, more general expressions of the fear of manipulation, see Mainland , “The modern method of clinical trial” (ref. 30), 154–5.

Lasagna , “The controlled clinical trial” (ref. 25), 359. See also Wolf Stewart , “The evaluation of therapy and disease”, Transactions of the American Clinical and Climatological Association, lxvi (1954), 61–73, esp. pp. 68–71.

Fissell Mary E. , “The disappearance of the patient's narrative and the invention of hospital medicine”, in French Roger Wear Andrew (eds), British medicine in an Age of Reform (London, 1991), 92–109; Reiser , Medicine and the reign of technology (ref. 5).

See the advertisements for Benemid [gouty arthritis], JAMA , cli (issue of 17 January 1953), Robalate [ulcers], JAMA , clxv (issue of 26 October 1957), 119; Lygenes [a contraceptive suppository], JAMA, cxlii (issue of 18 March 1950), 43; Butisol [anti—anxiety], JAMA, cxlii (issue of 5 September 1959), 43.

Lasagna , “The drug industry and American medicine” (ref. 21), 441.

For discussion of work in this area, much of it focusing on the best designs for assessing the effects of placebo reactions, see Wolf , “The evaluation of therapy and disease” (ref. 35); Haas , “The placebo problem” (ref. 3); Lasagna Louis Mosteller Frederick von Felsinger John Beecher Henry K. , “A study of the placebo response”, American journal of medicine, i (1954), 770–779.

Muench Hugo , “Biostatistics — And why!”, Postgraduate medicine, xiii (1953), 334–8, p. 338.

Silverman , Retrolental fibroplasia (ref. 23), 28–29; the example is also cited in Mainland Donald , “The clinical trial: Some difficulties and suggestions”, Journal of chronic diseases, xi (1960), 484–96, p. 489. On the role of sentiment and discipline in nursing, see Reverby Susan , Ordered to care: The dilemma of American nursing, 1850–1945 (Cambridge, 1987).

Mainland Donald , “Statistics in medical research”, Methods in medical research, vi (1954), 120–83, p. 137.

Hill A. Bradford , Principles of medical statistics , 3rd edn (London, 1945), 8; idem, “The clinical trial”, British medical bulletin, vii (1951), 278–82, p. 280; idem, “Assessment of therapeutic trials” (ref. 32), 132. See also Mainland , “Statistics in medical research” (ref. 42), 155.

Hill , “Assessment of therapeutic trials” (ref. 32), 132.

Porter , Trust in numbers (ref. 6), passim. See also Marks Harry M. , “Local knowledge: Experimental communities and experimental practices, 1918–1950”, paper presented at the conference on Twentieth Century Health Sciences: Problems and Interpretations, University of California, San Francisco, May 1988.

Marks Harry M. , “Notes from the underground: The social organization of therapeutic research, 1920–1950”, in Long Diana Maulitz Russell (eds), Grand rounds: One hundred years of internal medicine (Philadelphia, 1988), 297–336, esp. pp. 312–20; idem, “Cortisone, 1949: A year in the political life of a drug”, Bulletin of the history of medicine, lxvi (1992), 419–39. On the role of personal networks, see idem, “L'irruption de la preuve en médecine”, La recherche, cccxvi (1999), 76–81.

Burnham John C. , “American medicine's golden age: What happened to it”, Science, ccxv (1982), 1474–9.

Fye W. Bruce , American cardiology: The history of a specialty and its college (Baltimore, 1996), 131–49, 182–215.

Stevens Rosemary A. , In sickness and in wealth: American hospitals in the twentieth century (New York, 1989), 250–1.

Brandt Allan M. , No magic bullet: A social history of venereal disease in the United States since 1880 (New York, 1985), 172–4.

Dowling , “Twixt the cup and lip” (ref. 22), 659.

Dowling Harry F. , “Antibiotics — Singly or in combination?”, Transactions and studies of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, xxxi (1963), 1–9.

For discussions of relative efficacy, see the papers of the Therapeutic Trials Committee, American Medical Association archives, Chicago; and National Academy of Sciences, Drug efficacy study: Final report (Washington: 1969).

Mainland , “Statistics in medical research” (ref. 42), 122; and, more generally, Marks , Progress of experiment (ref. 13), 144–8, 155–8.

See Marks , Progress of experiment (ref. 13), 164–248 and, for the contemporary period, Epstein Steven , Impure science: Aids, activism and the politics of knowledge (Berkeley, 1996), 194–353; Dodier Nicolas et Barbot Janine , “Le temps des tensions épistémiques: Le développement des essais thérapeutiques dans la cadre du sida (1982–1996)”, Revue française de sociologie, xli (2000), 79–118.

Fredrickson Donald S. , “The field trial: Some thoughts on the indispensable ideal”, Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, xliv (1968), 985–93, p. 989.

On surrogate markers, see Temple Robert J. , “Are surrogate markers adequate to assess cardiovascular disease drugs?”, JAMA, clxxxii (1999), 790–5. On the suppression of research, see Rennie Drummond , “Thyroid storm”, JAMA, cclxxvii (1997), 1238–43; on corporate funding of medical research, see Blumenthal David Causino N. Campbell E. Louis K. S. , “Relationships between academic institutions and industry in the life sciences — An industry survey”, New England journal of medicine, cccxxxiv (1996), 368–73.

International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, “Conflict of interest”, Annals of internal medicine, cxviii (1993), 646–7; “American Federation for Clinical Research guidelines for avoiding conflict of interest”, Clinical research, xxxviii (1990), 39–40. For a survey of conflict of interest policies, see Witt M. D. Gostin L. O. , “Conflict of interest dilemmas in biomedical research”, JAMA, cclxxi (1994), 547–51.