Post-Hoc Enthusiasm and Wariness

Not Applicable

Not yet recruiting

• Conditions: Health Behavior
• Interventions: Other: Patient self-report

• Registration Number: NCT05686889
• Lead Sponsor: Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre

Brief Summary

The post-hoc fallacy (also termed the post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc fallacy) has been recognized for centuries with endless relevance. The general concept in medical care is that patients who improve after a treatment are not necessary patients who improve because of a treatment. Modern medicine provides multiple opportunities to examine such pitfalls of judgment due to the prevailing uncertainty, incompleteness of our understanding pathogenic mechanisms, and natural tendency to connect treatments to outcomes. In this study, we will investigate whether judgments about vitamin supplementation might demonstrate the post-hoc fallacy.

Detailed Description

We plan to conduct a brief survey of pharmacies portraying a patient in two slightly different versions. One version will portray the patient who feels better after starting a vitamin supplement whereas another version will portray the patient who feels unchanged after starting a vitamin supplement. The patients will be randomly assigned to participants and otherwise contain identical information. Judgments will be measured by eliciting participants recommendation about continuing the vitamin (Appendix_Script).

Study Timeline

• Status Verified: 2023-01
• Study First Submitted: 2023-01-07
• Study First Submitted QC: 2023-01-07
• Last Update Submitted: 2023-01-07
• Study First Posted: 2023-01-17
• Last Update Posted: 2023-01-17
• Study Start: 2023-05-01
• Primary Completion: 2023-09-01
• Study Completion: 2028-09-01

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: NOT_YET_RECRUITING
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 100

Inclusion Criteria

• Community pharmacist

Exclusion Criteria

• Outside Ontario

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: PARALLEL

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Failure	Patient self-report	Symptomatic improvement absent
Success	Patient self-report	Symptomatic improvement present

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Response variable in each survey is a binary recommendation whether to continue the vitamin supplement or discontinue the vitamin supplement	Short-term (less than 5 minutes)	Health provider clinical recommendation