[Professional skepticism in medical research].

Abstract

Some researchers in clinical medicine are firmly convinced about the benefits and the superiority of the treatments that they are evaluating. This may lead to conscious or unconscious decisions that affect the design, conduct, analysis, and reporting of trials. While human, and understandable, this practice should be balanced. This can be done by assigning professional skeptics in multidisciplinary research teams, aiming for adversarial collaboration in science, as advocated by Kahneman, and by installing Red Teams in complex analyses. Passion is what drives many, if not most, scientists. In clinical trials, the enthusiast should be surrounded by like-minded spirits, who can assemble the energy to finish the project. Yet there should also be at least one professional skeptic in the team.