If you do have to compare your drug with one produced by a competitor—to save face or because a regulator demands it—you could try a sneaky underhand trick: use an inadequate dose of the competing drug, so that patients on it don’t do very well, or give a very high dose of the competing drug, so that patients experience lots of side effects, or give the competing drug in the wrong way (perhaps orally when it should be intravenous, and hope most readers don’t notice); or you could increase the dose of the competing drug much too quickly, so that the patients taking it get worse side effects.
