Over the weekend I watched the first episode in the 3 part 60th anniversary series for Dr Who – a UK TV show in which the main character can travel to any point in space or time.

I started to wonder what might happen if The Doctor traveled to 1747 and brought back James Lind from the first recognized controlled clinical trial to view the way patient recruitment is conducted today.

Lind’s participants were all suffering from scurvy and would presumably have been motivated to take part purely on that basis. And I’m also assuming the potential threat of getting the lash may have provided something of an incentive back then.

Which makes me think there is quite a lot of gradation between that extreme and the issue of coercion we might be worried about today, such that we should really be able to come up with suitable – and ethical – incentives to encourage people to take part.