Prescrire is a French independent non-profit organisation that offers healthcare professionals information on the clinical benefits—or otherwise—of medicines and diagnostic strategies. It rates new medicines on a seven point scale from “bravo” to “judgement reserved,” via “possibly helpful,” “nothing new,” and “not acceptable.” A cross sectional study of 632 medicines entering the French market between 2008 and 2018 looked at the clinical benefit of each medicine according to Prescrire (and the Haute Autorité de Santé (HAS), which has a similar but less interesting 6 point scale). Of the new drugs, 73% originated in the commercial sector, and 27% came from an academic setting or in collaboration with commercial enterprises. Most of the medicines were judged as having no added clinical benefit, but a greater proportion of those developed in academia were likely to have some added benefit, according to Prescrire, than those from the commercial sector (57 (34%) v 98 (21%) respectively, P=0.001). Bravo academics. …