Risk of low impact research

I AGREE with the observations of the author of “On the track of the silent killer” (The Star, March 6) and would like to add another. Clinical research only becomes useful if it is of technically high quality. The problems are summarised in the paper “Why Most Clinical Research Is Not Useful”, PLoS Med 2016.

Many, if not most, of the problems identified in the paper, stem from lack of a properly trained clinical research workforce. Much of the clinical research workforce are either untrained and/or itinerant (comprising of students of some sort).