Clinical trials: what a waste

Trials that are unregistered, unfinished, unpublished, unreachable, or simply irrelevant Randomized controlled trials are the gold standard tool for evaluating interventions. Nevertheless, the utility of this excellent tool is contingent on how it is used. Chapman and colleagues (doi:10.1136/bmj.g6870) show this in a sample of 395 trials relevant to surgical practice that were registered in ClincialTrials.gov between 2008 and 2009.1 By the end...