Heard a new idea today about why the placebo in B-OM trial may be higher than expected - the caretakers of the trial can easily see which patients are getting the tested drug and if they are doing much better than the placebo group, they sometimes give the really needy ones in the placebo group some of the drug being tested to help put them out of their misery. He espoused that it was systemic in clinical trials.

Sounds plausible to me since even though the caretakers know it is wrong they are also nurses and strive to end patient misery . Any other ideas regarding this?