Blinding is a research technique that conceals treatment assignment information from participants, researchers, or both to prevent bias in outcome assessment. Its parameters are: (1) a target of concealment (participants, researchers, outcome assessors, or all), (2) the information being concealed (group assignment, intervention details, or study hypotheses), and (3) the mechanism of concealment (placebo controls, sham procedures, coded labeling, or independent data monitoring). Blinding persists through methodological standards (CONSORT, ICH-GCP), institutional review board requirements, and publication peer review protocols. [formal: caecitas | substrate: behavior | horizon: hours | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.01]
Accepted ontology entry
blinding
Blinding is a research technique that conceals treatment assignment information from participants, researchers, or both to prevent bias in outcome assessment. Its parameters are: (1) a target of concealment (participants, researchers, outc…
Definition
Why it is in scope
A human-made research technique — concealing treatment assignment information from participants and/or researchers to prevent bias in experimental outcomes. Built to persist through methodological standards, peer review, and reproducibility requirements.
Names and aliases
- blindingen · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
- cmrvpfry601wq2ceichuy36vpDEPENDS_ON →
remove experimental-design — does blinding stop operating? Yes. Blinding conceals treatment assignment to prevent bias; without experimental design providing treatment groups, blinding has no role to play.
Relations to this entry
- cmrvzvj0y02vv2ceim32xvud8← DEPENDS_ON
Direction tested: blind-test DEPENDS_ON blinding. Removal test: remove blinding and blind testing ceases to operate — the concept of blind testing IS the application of blinding to experimental procedures. Without the concept of blinding, there is no blind test. The dependency is constitutive.
Record identity
- Created
- Jul 22, 2026, 12:18 PM UTC
- Content hash
- f508cc4019e145246e718edadacd30665a7146e4b118f7a6ca47af8bf8711f53