Author Description

The Null Seeking Trial (NST) is a research technique which was developed in response to the dilemmas facing surgeons designing, setting up and running trials and also for patients when considering participation in randomised trials. NST could be applied to a wide variety of research questions in diff erent disciplines. It diff ers form conventional randomised trial methodology both in design and in purpose. The purpose of a conventional trial is to observe a diff erence between treatment groups and then to infer that this diff erence is caused by the treatment; so called 'causal inference'. Th e purpose of a Null Seeking Trial is to fi nd the circumstances where two treatments have the same eff ect. With conventional trials, a result is not available until the trial is completed unlike NSTs where individual patients' results are available as soon as they are recorded. When a patient participates, they can consult the results already available to help them decide which treatment to have. They only opt for randomisation if for patients like them there is little diff erence between the results of the two treatments. This scheme creates a negative feedback loop that determines in which patients the two treatments are equivalent.