AS A YOUNG CLINICIAN, I was interested in making a difference; it did not matter how much of a difference, as long as I could claim some patient benefit. And I really didn’t care what benefit: better survival, less local recurrence, shorter hospital stays, fewer narcotics—the specifics did not matter. With retrospective observational studies, it was easy to claim a benefit when I was demonstrating a potential or probable association. I intervened, and the patient improved! If I could prove that claim and make it look scientific with a randomized controlled trial, was I then done?
To answer this question, we recently completed a study of the Trump deregulatory record at the two-year mark (Belton and Graham 2019). We interviewed dozens of regulatory experts, reviewed the literature, searched regulatory databases, and conducted original analysis. We deliberately chose not to take a position on whether deregulation is in itself good or bad, but rather to focus on whether the Trump Administration has been effective in deregulation.