Sham or Vehicle? - (Jun/03/2014 )

Hey guys, 

This is my first post here, hope I can get some help.

We are collaborating with a research of parkinson disease rat model; and in this model we inject a toxic substance in a certain brain area.

The control group of this experiment received ascorbic acid, which is the vehicle of our toxin. 

During the written of the paper, it was named the control group as "Sham". 

But I recently heard that "sham" and "vehicle" group are different. Sham would be the one that had the cirurgy but not received the vehicle (just to have the lesion/stress of the cirurgy), while the vehicle group would have the lesion/cirurgy and the vehicle used to dilute the drug/substance.

Is that true? Because I reading some papers and I´ve seen people administrating the vehicle on control group and calling it as "sham".

Thank you very much for your attention.

Leo 

You could really call it either one.  Whether you call the group 'vehicle' or 'sham', the important thing is to make it clear what that group received.

I'd probably call it 'Vehicle', but either term is fine.