UK experts: Drug studies being suppressed by researchers, could hurt patients
UK experts: Drug studies being suppressed by researchers, could hurt patients
By Associated Press, Wednesday, January 4, 10:36 AM
LONDON A British medical journal says a worrying number of drug studies are being suppressed by researchers and that the lack of public data could threaten patient safety.
One study described by the BMJ journal found the results of fewer than half of drug trials paid for by the U.S. National Institutes for Health were published in a scientific journal within 30 months of being finished.
The U.S. agency spends about $3.5 billion sponsoring more than 100,000 clinical trials worldwide.
Previous studies have found one quarter to one half of clinical trials are unpublished for various reasons, including companies sitting on information that could hurt sales, journals uninterested in publishing negative results and academics fearful of releasing results that contradict their original hypothesis.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/uk-experts-drug-studies-being-suppressed-by-researchers-could-hurt-patients/2012/01/04/gIQAdquZaP_story.html
Uncle Joe
(58,426 posts)Thanks for the thread, Judi Lynn.
HuckleB
(35,773 posts)hedgehog
(36,286 posts)drug trial , or even some odd observations, can be a major Aha! moment for someone else.
surrealAmerican
(11,364 posts)... to make trial results public without waiting for a journal publisher or drug company.
If only they had some sort of internet presence.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)You cannot serve both god and Mammon.
AllyCat
(16,228 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)LeftishBrit
(41,212 posts)Quite generally speaking in research, negative results are less likely to get published than positive results. There is a pervasive attitude that negative results are at best boring, at worst proof that a study is a failure. Add to that situations where there may be pressure on researchers by drug companies, and you end up with a lot of bias in publication.