Real-world studies no substitute for RCTs in establishing efficacy

We live in the real world, so it is reasonable to expect that data collected from the real world should help identify effective therapies. Indeed, rapid increases in the availability of registries, electronic health records, and insurance claims, and the ability to access, process, link, and analyse data from these sources at fairly low cost lend support for calls to replace randomised controlled trials (RCTs) with so-called real-world studies...