Is blinding in studies of manual soft tissue mobilisation of the back possible? A feasibility randomised controlled trial with Swiss graduate students.

"Declarations Ethics approval and consent to participateThe local independent research ethics committee of Canton Zurich (Kantonale Ethikkommission Zürich) deemed that ethical approval was not required for this methodological study of Swiss graduate students pursuant to Art. 2 (outside scope) of the Swiss Federal Act on Research involving Human Beings (Human Research Act, HRA). All participants provided voluntary electronic informed consent. Consent for publicationNot applicable. Competing interestsCAH is an Associate Editor of Chiropractic & Manual Therapies. The editorial management system automatically blinded him from the submitted manuscript and he had no part in the editorial or peer-review process of this manuscript. CAH reports grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the European Centre for Chiropractic Research Excellence (ECCRE) outside the submitted work. JML reports funding from the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) and the Graduate Campus of the University of Zurich outside the submitted work. All other authors report no financial relationships with any organisations that might have an interest in the submitted work in the previous three years. All authors report no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work. Competing interests CAH is an Associate Editor of Chiropractic & Manual Therapies. The editorial management system automatically blinded him from the submitted manuscript and he had no part in the editorial or peer-review process of this manuscript. CAH reports grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the European Centre for Chiropractic Research Excellence (ECCRE) outside the submitted work. JML reports funding from the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) and the Graduate Campus of the University of Zurich outside the submitted work. All other authors report no financial relationships with any organisations that might have an interest in the submitted work in the previous three years. All authors report no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work."

"Funding No funding was provided for this study."

"Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT05822947 (retrospectively registered)"