A Condemnation of Suppression of Medical Research... by Ben Goldacre in the New York Times

Amazingly, this topic now seems to be in the mainstream.The Goldacre Version in the New York Times in 2013 In his op-ed, Ben Goldacre introduced it thus:the entire evidence base for medicine has been undermined by a casual lack of transparency. Sometimes this is through a failure to report concerns raised by doctors and internal analyses, as was the case with Johnson & Johnson. More commonly, it involves the suppression of clinical trial results, especially when they show a drug is no good.He noted that this problems was supposed to be fixed by the registration of clinical trials, and by changes in editorial policies at medical journals:many in the industry now claim it has been fixed. But every intervention has been full of loopholes, none has been competently implemented and, lastly, with no routine public audit, flaws have taken years to emerge.  The Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007 is the most widely cited fix. It required that new clinical trials conducted in the United States post summaries of their results at clinicaltrials.gov within a year of completion, or face a fine of $10,000 a day.  But in 2012, the British Medical Journal published the first open audit of the process, which found that four out of five trials covered by the legislation had ignored the reporting requirements. Amazingly, no fine has yet been levied. An earlier fake fix dates from 2005, when the International Committee of Medical Journal Edito...
Source: Health Care Renewal - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Tags: perverse incentives impunity You heard it here first transparency anechoic effect suppression of medical research Source Type: blogs