The gold standard in Newtonian (physical based) science is a double blind inert placebo study. Double blind meaning that both groups involved in the study have no idea who is receiving what is being experimented on and who is not. This is to prevent any bias. Inert placebo means using a substance that is known to have neither a negative or positive effect on the animal, human or object being tested.
Let’s set up an example of a double blind inert placebo experiment. We are testing a pill and have two groups of subjects. One group will receive the pill while the other group will receive a sugar pill, which is considered an inert placebo. This placebo sugar pill looks the exact same as the pill being tested, so there is no way to look at and tell that the person is receiving one or the other, again to prevent any bias.
In order to make the experiment double blind those who are taking the pill have no idea if they are receiving the actual pill or the placebo. Those who are giving the pill and collecting the data on side effects also have no idea who is receiving the placebo verses who is receiving the actual pill. This is can be done by assigning everyone a number and having a key to look at afterwards to know who did in fact receive the pill verse the placebo.
Use of an inert placebo studies is extremely important when testing the safety of something. If we test something that can cause harm against something else that can cause harm it introduces confounding variables, which muddle the data and makes it hard to determine if the negative events that occurred are a result of genuine mishap or the result of exposure to the item in question.
Despite the importance of inert placebo safety studies when we look at the FDA package inserts you are hard pressed to find inserts that list a safety study using an actual inert placebo. Some say placebo and do not say what it is, while others say placebo and later mention it was another vaccine, or a shot of aluminum adjuvant (hello neurotoxin!) While others may use an actual inert placebo such as a shot of saline, BUT they then combine the data from that group with another group who did not receive an inert placebo remuddling the data.
You can view the FDA package inserts for the vaccines on the market here.
If vaccines are safe and effective there is zero reason to not be using an inert placebo in all vaccine safety studies. If they are safe prove it!
