How Randomised Trials won the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805
Friday, July 13th, 2018
Listening to Karl Kruszelnicki’s Shirtloads of Science podcast episode on June 24, 2018 – titled Randomistas – they’ve won wars, healed the sick and helped us learn revealed an interesting example, in Admiral Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar, as to the value of randomised trials in shaping the World. The interviewee was Andrew Leigh, author of Randomistas: How Radical Researchers Changed Our World.
To set the scene, Andrew Leigh points out that in the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) scurvy caused the vast majority of deaths. A huge 180,000 men died in the British Navy in those seven years and a less impressive couple of thousand were killed in the fighting. Scurvy was that bad.
