Garbage in, garbage out.

The European Society for Medical Oncology-Magnitude of Clinical Benefit Scale (ESMO-MCBS) is a recently-developed tool to address growing concerns over high-dollar yet clinically meaningless trial outcomes. This pragmatic review demonstrates how even the MCBS can be BS when rating an outcome borne of flawed design, implementation, or data analysis. Among 10 trials selected with one of the aforementioned flaws, 7 were not adequately addressed when applying the MCBS. Future iterations of this tool will need to more comprehensively assess not only what the data is saying but also its source. | Gyawali, ESMO Open 2021