information:highlighting, structural:scholar_edition, quality:correction, stylistic:style_transfer, stylistic:tone
Significance

Bias due to poor blinding tends to favor the experimental group, resulting in inflated effect size and risk of false positives. Success or failure of blinding is rarely reported or measured; it is implicitly assumed that experiments reported as "blind" are truly blind. Critics have pointed out that without assessment and reporting, there is no way to know if a blind succeeded. This shortcoming is especially concerning given that even a small error in blinding can produce a statistically significant result in the absence of any real difference between test groups when a study is sufficiently powered (i.e. statistical significance is not robust to bias). As such, many statistically significant results in randomized controlled trials may be caused by error in blinding. Some researchers have called for the mandatory assessment of blinding efficacy in clinical trials.