Clinical research should primarily aim at identifying interventions that provide patients with benefits or improve the efficiency of national health services – or both. However, more and more clinical trials are pursuing marketing aims, e.g. promoting the use of technologies in clinical conditions in which they have no evidence-based efficacy, fostering prescriptions in an apparently sluggish market, preparing future markets by fostering expectations that are still groundless, and so on. Here are a few examples from a varying record of cases.
