What can I say? Stupid, stupid, stupid.
http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=74174&CultureCode=en
An investigation into unpublished stroke research data has revealed
that 19.6% of completed clinical trials, which could potentially
influence patient care, are not published in full. Researchers writing
in BioMed Central’s open access journal Trials describe how these unpublished studies included more than 16,000 participants and tested 89 different interventions.
Peter Sandercock and his colleague Lorna Gibson worked with a team of
researchers from the University of Edinburgh, UK, to search the
Cochrane Stroke Group’s Specialised Register of Trials for completed
trials of pharmacological interventions for acute ischemic stroke, and
to determine how many of these were ultimately published. He said,
“Failure to publish trial data is to be deprecated as it sets aside the
altruism of participants’ consent to be exposed to the risks of
experimental interventions, potentially biases the assessment of the
effects of therapies, and may lead to premature discontinuation of
research into promising treatments”.
The researchers identified 940 trials, of which 125 were not
published in full. The largest trial included 856 patients, while two
unpublished trials included fewer than 10 patients each. According to
Sandercock, “Several of the trials we identified may have been large
enough to influence clinical practice and the findings of systematic
reviews and meta-analyses”.
Sandercock concludes, “Well designed clinical trials should be
published because their results can benefit patients, justifying the
risk to trial participants from experimental treatments. We found 22
unpublished trials that reported the number of deaths. In these trials,
636 people died, but no information was available on whether the
experimental drug had contributed to any of those deaths”.
551 different researchers were involved in conducting these studies
and of these, 72 had been involved in more than one trial that remained
unpublished.
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