This is an excerpt from a blog originally published on Students 4 Best Evidence.
I thought about giving this blog a more sensible title. Something like “things to look out for when reading a paper on a clinical trial”. But, I needed to get your attention, didn’t I….
Let’s set the scene: An increasing number of clinical trials are funded by the pharmaceutical industry.
But this is clearly problematic. In 2012, a Cochrane Review including 49 studies, found that industry-sponsored studies testing drugs and medical devices more often favour the sponsor’s products than non-industry sponsored studies.