Comparative Effectiveness Research: Research designed to compare the relative effectiveness and costs of different medical treatments or interventions. Comparative effectiveness research typifies the health-cost-minded decade in which we are living and the rise of the policy analyst and health economist in the health care sector as opposed to, well, medical people.

Essentially, comparative effectiveness is a methodology comprised of various health research tools (e.g., clinical trials and meta-analyses of them and of other kinds of individual studies) used to determine that a certain drug, medical device, therapy, surgical procedure, etc. actually will help you feel better or cure you and not simply harm or kill you expensively or just waste your money without actually doing anything much.

A meta-analysis, by the way, is a statistical process that sifts through the findings of many studies and is the kind of thing that often is printed up in prominent medical journals and reported on the news. Doctors use meta-analyses when deciding not do something anymore or to continue doing something. This is all very scientific.