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The major purpose of control groups is to allow for discrimination of patient outcomes by the observer.
The control group experience tells us what would have happened to patients if they had not received the test treatment. If the course of a disease was uniform, and we knew what to expect, we would not need control groups. However, most situations are, obviously, not that simple.
One of the benefits of the placebo control is that it is a little easier to set a randomization protocol in place. If there