Final answer:
The term for medicine with no active ingredients is a placebo, used in control groups during clinical trials to compare with the effects of actual medications and to control for the placebo effect.
Step-by-step explanation:
The term for medicine with no active ingredients is a placebo. A placebo is a "fake" treatment that has no effect on health and is included in a study to control for the placebo effect. This method helps researchers determine the effectiveness of new medications by comparing their effects to those of the placebo. In a typical medical study, there might be two groups: the experimental group receives the actual medication, while the control group receives the placebo. This is done to isolate the effects of the medication from the placebo effect, which occurs when participants in a study experience health changes even though they have received no active treatment, possibly due to their expectations of treatment.
Blinding is a technique used to reduce bias in experiments. A double-blind experiment is one in which neither the subjects nor the researchers know who is receiving the active treatment and who is receiving the placebo. This setup is considered the gold standard for clinical trials, as it helps to ensure that the outcomes are not influenced by expectations or bias on the part of the participants or the researchers.