PLoS medicine
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Corrado Barbui and Irene Bighelli question the current rules governing registration of new medicines in Europe, using the example of psychiatric drugs, and argue that the concept of absolute efficacy should be replaced by the concept of added value whereby evidence from studies comparing a new product with an active comparator should guide the drug approval process. Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary.
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Sanjay Basu and colleagues explain how models are increasingly used to inform public health policy yet readers may struggle to evaluate the quality of models. All models require simplifying assumptions, and there are tradeoffs between creating models that are more "realistic" versus those that are grounded in more solid data. Indeed, complex models are not necessarily more accurate or reliable simply because they can more easily fit real-world data than simpler models can. Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary.