Editorial Research and Advocacy in Nutrition Therapy: Our Specialty Needs You

swered in clinical nutrition. The old nutrition support spe-cialty was plagued by a preponderance of small, single-center, and/or underpowered studies. We have attempted to use these often very small trials to create our clinical guidelines. I believe that we as a new nutrition therapy specialty must now approach our clinical trials as cardiol-ogy or oncology would approach their new drug trials: with well-designed, appropriately powered, multicenter trials. We are currently close to developing the critical mass to bring to bear a powerful multinational nutrition network of researchers that will be capable of performing these key multicenter trials. The American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (A.S.P.E.N.) and the Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (JPEN) can and should be catalysts and leaders in this field