What serves as a standard of comparison to evaluate the effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable

The soviet union beat the us to the first successful launch, with the october 4, 1957, orbiting of sputnik 1, and later beat the us to have the first human in earth orbit, yuri gagarin, on april 12, 1961. the "race" peaked with the july 20, 1969, us landing of the first humans on the moon with apollo 11

The first means of speeding up reactions mentioned by the speaker is raising the enzymes