Mr. Broderick, you must mean "orthodox protocols" like the ones the FDA uses, right? First, employees go back and forth between big pharma and the FDA. One year a big pharma employee, the next year working for the FDA, deciding what new drugs have merit, based on FDA protocol "double blind placebo controlled studies". BUT, these  pharmaceutical companies are the ones who hire people to do that 'research".  They can conduct 100 "research studies", and if 96 of those prove the drug being studied is not effective or even harmful, the pharmaceutical company can choose to hold back all 96 studies. If only 3 of those studies indicate the drug being "studied" is a tiny bit more effective than the placebo, and the 3 studies supporting its approval are submitted (omitting the other 96 detrimental studies), it gets approved. Very "orthodox"!