ABSTRACT
The early chapters of this book may have given the impression that an RCT is undertaken to establish whether one treatment is superior to another and, provided the trial is properly conducted and of adequate size, that at the conclusion of the trial there will be a clear-cut answer about which is the better treatment. Moreover, once such a study has been published, it is unlikely that it would be ethically defensible to run another similar trial. Thus, the reader might have been led to believe that clinical research largely comprises a collection of well-conducted studies which each settle once and for all, which of the particular treatments is superior for the condition under study. In reality things are quite different.
