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Hmm, I read the article as explicitly calling out "clinical trials" (as referenced in the title and abstract) and it makes no reference research studies. I don't understand the distinction between "research studies" and "clinical trials", surely all research studies where an RCT is performed with real patients and real drugs is a clinical trial?

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I meant “trials for research studies” as opposed to “trials for drug or device approval.”

The amount of record keeping and oversight of a drug approval trial is enormous (and as a consequence insanely expensive) — data handling, having disjoint groups at each stage handling and analyzing data, etc and detailed records of every manufacturing step — think ISO9000 on steroids.

Nobody would bother to go to that effort for a scientific exploration, nor should they. So the bar is much lower.

I am making no excuse for shoddy science! But it is quite unlikely for a licensed drug.

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