title: Publishing clinical trials and dealing with external comparisons.
abstract: This brief note is designed to provide research teams that are involved with the publication of clinical trials in peer-reviewed medical journals with a reference for the rebuttal of referees' criticism that your results are in some way inferior overall to those of others. In these reviewers' eyes, a trial that shows less benefit than other trials has no public health benefit, and hence they recommend rejection. In fact, such policies lead to publication bias, the systematic overestimation of benefits of therapy in the published literature.
authors.forename: J J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Shuster
mesh_terms: D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D006801:Humans; D017712:Peer Review, Research; D010506:Periodicals as Topic; D017594:Publication Bias