A study that received absolutely no attention from any health news
reporters – it’s such an unsexy beast – is, however, a very important one for
all of you to note.
In this report published in the journal, PLOS ONE, researchers from Boston University School of Public
Health looked at 400 randomly selected clinical trials (what you and I would
call “medical studies”) that were completed in the year 2008, and found that
118 of them had not been published.
In other words, about 1/3 of the findings of studies that were started
with a view to finding out clinical information never got shared with the
public.
Why not?
One can only speculate.
Most of the unpublished studies had been funded by pharmaceutical
companies so one can only guess that if the data was unpublished, the most
likely reason is that the data didn’t meet the expectations of the funders.
As well, of course, researchers way prefer to publish “positive”
reports – they are much more likely to keep getting funded if their fata is
helpful – and journals also prefer to publish “positive” stuff.
Bottom line: you should never be surprised when you learn that some
drug that’s been out for a few years has been shown to have some unintended
consequence.
