// NATURE NEWS — SPAZIO & SCIENZA
People’s social networks can be unintentionally reshaped during randomized interventions
Joana Gonçalves-Sá is in the Laboratory of Instrumentation and Experimental Particle Physics (LIP), 1649-003 Lisbon, Portugal, and the Complexity Science Hub, Vienna, Austria.
Search author on:
PubMed
Google Scholar
Ana Maria Jaramillo is in the Complexity Science Hub, 1030 Vienna, Austria, and Graz Technical University, Graz, Austria.
Search author on:
PubMed
Google Scholar
Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are designed to isolate cause and effect. They have become important instruments for evaluating interventions in medicine, economics and public health. Their strength comes from assigning ‘treatments’ independently of the characteristics of the participants. However, people live in communities, and interventions delivered to individuals can have consequences far beyond the outcome that researchers set out to measure. Writing in Nature, Papamichalis et al.1 highlight this phenomenon.
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Papamichalis, M., Forastiere, L., Airoldi, E. M. & Christakis, N. Nature 659, 113–120 (2026).
Benjamin-Chung, J. et al. Int. J. Epidemiol. 47, 332–347 (2018).