Alternate-day fasting A paper published in 2017 in JAMA Internal Medicine (jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2623528) reported on a study of alternate-day fasting as a weight-loss method. One hundred obese persons were assigned at random to one of three groups: an alternate-day fasting group, a calorie restrictive group, and a control. The alternate-day fasting group alternately consumed 25% of their usual caloric intake during lunch on fasting days and 125% on the alternating days. The calorie restrictive group consumed 75% of baseline energy over three meals each day. The control group ate as usual. The study reports that there was essentially no difference in weight loss between the alternate-day fasting group and the calorie-restricted group, both losing an average of 6.8% of their weight. From this description, identify:

1. The participants.

2. The treatments.

3. The response.

4. Was the study blinded? If not, should it have been blinded?

5. The participants were not a random sample from the population. Is that a problem for this study?