Believe the Data

Better care for our patients comes largely from clinical research. Such research is possible because of a union between a critically posed research question and the altruism of patient participants. One would therefore think that the translation of research findings into clinical actions would depend solely on the importance of the research question and the quality of the data used to answer it. An article by Kesselheim and colleagues in this issue of the Journal provides evidence that this assumption is not entirely true.1 The article describes research into the medical sociology of how internists use clinical information. The investigators . . .