The catchphrases “Clinically Shown” or “Clinically Proven” occupy a special place in the vocabulary of advertising come-ons. Because of their implied medical credibility, such taglines presume more (undeserved) credibility than marketing cliches like “Limited Time Offer” or “Call Now, Operators Are Standing By!”

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The following explanation, with which I completely agree, came from Bard.AI, Google’s large language machine-learning model – accessed November 24, 2023:

“The phrase ‘clinically proven’ is often used in marketing and advertising to convey the impression that a product or treatment has been rigorously tested and found to be effective. However, the phrase is not scientifically valid or meaningful, can be used to describe a wide range of studies, from small and poorly designed to large and well-designed, provides no information about the strength of the evidence, and does not guarantee that a treatment is safe or effective for everyone.

The term “clinical” simply means that something is related to the practice of medicine. Therefore, a “clinically proven” claim could refer to anything from a single case study to a large, randomized controlled trial. In science, something is only considered ‘proven’ if there is overwhelming evidence to support it. In the context of clinical research, this means there should be multiple, well-designed studies that consistently show the same positive results.”

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So, think twice, Mr. Tuttle, about your secretary’s Pepto-Bismol recommendation, even if

“Hospital Tests Prove It Relieves Upsets.”

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And my more analytical observation: Although the phrase permeates advertisements for over-the-counter medications in all media, all the time, “Clinically proven” appears in the title of just thirty-six of the National Library of Medicine’s more than 36 million citations of published biomedical literature. One could, then, legitimately argue that “clinically proven” agents (versus “scientifically proven” ones) may truly be “one in a million.”