Understanding medical research

[PeterCH]

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/understandingmedicalresearch.html

The NIH has a series of articles targetted at non-medical people to help explain medical research and how to judge articles in the popular media.

 

[Phronesis]

Thanks for the link. I agree, the basics and steps of medical research needs to be understood.

Often popular articles allude to promising results in pre-clinical studies, e.g. in vitro studies, or animal studies. Fascinating as it sounds, the proof of concept only comes when stage III clinical trials (at least) are completed. Before that, a massive amount of work needs to be done, e.g. mechanistic studies, pharmacokinetics, safety etc.