How to read a paper: Papers that report drug trials
- 23 August 1997
- Vol. 315 (7106) , 480-483
- https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.315.7106.480
Abstract
Pharmaceutical “reps” do not tell nearly as many lies as they used to (drug marketing has become an altogether more sophisticated science), but they have been known to cultivate a shocking ignorance of basic epidemiology and clinical trial design when it suits them.2 It often helps their case, for example, to present the results of uncontrolled trials and express them in terms of before and after differences in a particular outcome measure.3 The recent correspondence in the Lancet and BMJ on placebo effects should remind you why uncontrolled before and after studies are the stuff of teenage magazines, not hard science.4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12Keywords
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