The experiment’s control group experiences a real life while serving as somebody else’s comparison.

The people who serve as a baseline are not a baseline to themselves. Their year is as full and consequential as anybody’s, lived from the inside, while from the outside they function as a measuring stick for someone else’s question. Whenever people are grouped for comparison, this is happening, and the comparison flattens the lives it counts.

Remember it whenever you look at data about people, including data about yourself. Averages, cohorts, and control groups are made of individuals with their own reasons. It is also worth noticing when you are being used as someone else’s comparison, and declining to live your life as a benchmark in a study you did not consent to.