In January 2002 the International Consensus Workshop on Caries Clinical Trials was organised in Scotland. The meeting was an initiative of both academic and industrial partners, in order to arrive at a consensus about ways to modernise the design of clinical trials for caries preventive agents (Caries Clinical Trials or CCTs). All presentations delivered at the workshop and the consensus statements formulated at the end of the workshop were published last year in a special issue of the Journal of Dental Research. In this paper some important aspects are highlighted and the workshop conclusions are presented.