Double-blind Diapers

When I was in fourth grade, I had an excellent science fair project. At least it seemed that way to me since my hypothesis was true. I thought I was a genius. I had predicted which of four diaper brands was the most absorbent. I hypothesized that Pampers would be able to absorb the most, and in fact the Pampers diapers were the most absorbent. But looking back, I do not know if I gave a fair shot to all the other brands. I may have let the Pampers diapers soak in the water solution for an extra few seconds. Or maybe I made sure to take the Pampers diapers off the dripping rack first to make sure they had the best shot at being the most absorbent diapers.

            After this week, I now better understand why my experiment was flawed. I also understand why experimenters often do not allow themselves to be in on the information they are experimenting with - even when they are the ones doing the actual experiment!

            This is a method called a double-blind experiment. A double-blind experiment is where both the experimenter and participants are prevented from knowing certain information that might lead them to a bias. If they are biased, they could do something consciously or subconsciously that could invalidate their results. For example, if an experimenter knows which group of people took a certain drug that he believes leads to better test scores, he might subconsciously give that group information to help them perform better on the test. In this case, his results would not be valid.

            So in my experiment, I could not exactly have made it a double-blind experiment, for my “participants” were diapers. However, I could have applied the same concept to make myself unbiased in my experimenting, in which case I would not have known which diapers were Pampers, and I would not have been biased.