5 ms·
This is because there is no government mandate to actually report the results of any clinical trial, even the registered one. Another comment [1] says that the
by shmageggy 14y ago
This is because there is no government mandate to actually report the results of any clinical trial, even the registered one.
Another comment [1] says that there is an FDA regulation to report results within a year [2]. Are you talking about something else, another type of trial or something?
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5099671 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5099671
[2] http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/about-site/results http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/about-site/results
- Alex3917 14y agoThe results are required to be posted on clinicaltrials.gov, though it isn't actually enforced from what I've read. But I was actually talking about how there is no requirement to publish the results in a medical journal. So there could be a dozen trials for every one that shows up in a PubMed search.
- kvb 14y agoBut there's going to be publication bias regardless of pharma's incentives, right? If I'm running a medical journal, why would I publish an article that says "this new slightly larger study also found drug x effective"?
- refurb 14y agoAn even better question would be: if I'm running a medical journal, why would I publish an article that states "new therapy for kidney cancer found not to be effective" People forget that publishing a paper is no small feat in and of itself. Extensive data analysis, manuscript writing, reviewing, editing, legal clearance, etc. Are people really suggesting that a pharma company who conducts a trial and figures out that 1/2 through the trial the drug isn't working should be forced to do a complete data analysis and publish the results? That sounds ridiculous.