Hacker News Reader

have you considered implementing a false control (i.e. putting in a badly implemented bionic reading version and serving that to a random number of people to see whether people also report speed increases with "bad bionic reading"?)

i know a significant number of people here are probably already familiar with what bionic reading is, but still, could be an interesting control.

View on HN

yeah i acknowledged that in the experiment design discussion

> We recognize this is clearly not a gold standard, double-blind RCT. Researcher and participant alike knew what Bionic Reading claims to achieve. We simply did not have time to (1) develop a mock Bionic Reading placebo that, for example, might bold the middle of the word instead of the beginning and/or (2) find a set of test subjects who are blissfully offline and unaware of this viral sensation. That said, we controlled for what we could and we think we've already gathered some fairly compelling evidence.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com