The quality of reporting of RCTs published in English and in languages other than English was compared to determine whether or not there were differences between conventional medicine and CAM reports. The investigators examined more than 600 RCTs associated with 125 systematic reviews. They extracted the characteristics of each RCT using a standardised data collection form and assessed quality using the Jadad scale and the adequacy of allocation concealment. There were only minor differences in the quality of reports of RCTs published in English compared with other languages (median quality score 3 vs. 2, P=0.10) and the quality of reports of CAM RCTs was similar to the conventional medicine reports (median score 3 vs. 2, P=0.14). There was no effect of language of publication on quality of reporting for conventional medicine trials (median score 2 vs. 2, P=0.12). Among CAM trials, however, overall quality scores were higher for reports in English than for reports in other languages (median score 3 vs. 2, P=0.04).