RFK Jr. to require placebo-controlled studies for new vaccines

Here is a fun example of a randomized controlled trial from the British Medical Journal: Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft: randomized controlled trial

https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094

What would be the benefit of a placebo study vs studying the differences between vaccinated and unvaccinated populations?

Is the hypothesis that there is some kind of psychosomatic/placebo effect to vaccines, where just the process of getting injected changes outcomes? I find that hard to believe.

God the US is so far on the Authoritarian side of the graph that even our "burn down the government deregulate everything" party can't help themselves. Any voter romanticism about having the government have less control over your life surely has to be dispelled by this point. This was the GOPs moment to actually deregulate things in a manner that's good for people and they just said, "we're keeping everything the same, just with conspiracy theories added." I mean it's probably for the best that they're squandering their shot on stupid shit like this but I still wonder if they will ever wake up and realize their position as not the opposition party anymore and that they have to / get to lead — tackle the bigger issues and shape the direction of the country going forward. They won, they owned the libs mission accomplished whatever and now it's their moment to govern and they're still acting like pissed off back seat drivers.

In tech terms they're the principal architects now and they're using that power to get their preferences on minor PR reviews merged.

Regardless of what you think of RFK, there's no good reason to think more testing of medicine is a bad thing.