roy poses wrote:
> In the last few weeks, two important articles have appeared suggesting
> that suppression of medical research that fails to favor sponsors'
> products, and concealed manipulation of research to make it more likely
> to favor sponsors' products are more widespread and systemic than
> previously appreciated.
>
> A letter about suppression of research on sumatriptan got little
> notice. [Tfeft-Hansen PC. Unpublished clinical trials of sumatriptan.
> Lancet 2009; 374: 1501-2. Link here
> <http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2809%2961906-1/fulltext>.]
> A major article on concealed manipulation of research on gabapentin did
> not rate an accompanying editorial, and got scant media notice. [Vedula
> SS, Bero L, Scherer RW, Dickersin K. Outcome reporting in
> industry-sponsored trials of gabapentin for off-label use. N Engl J Med
> 2009; 361: 1963-1971. Link here
> <http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/361/20/1963> .]
>
> So I tried to create some echoes with posts on Health Care Renewal.
> http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/11/suppression-of-clinical-trials-of.html
>
> http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/11/editorial-that-wasnt-evidence-for.html
>
> I fear that such suppression and manipulation threaten the foundations
> of evidence-based medicine. We can't review what we can't find. Even
> rigorous critical review cannot fully detect manipulation, especially
> the sort of concealed manipulation discussed above.
>
> I submit that if evidence-based medicine is worth saving, and I fully
> believe it is, we need to more vocally protest research suppression and
> manipulation, and start developing some solutions which likely will
> require major changes in global health policy.
Excellent articles. Thanks for bringing them to our attention.
Clearly, the peer-reviewers were capable of looking up the information
on the clinical trials registries and failed to so. I would suggest that
journals should explicitly require peer-reviewers to compare the paper
to the registry. Also, a clear inconsistency between the paper and the
registry discovered after publication should be sufficient grounds for
retracting a research result. Finally, withholding negative information
about a drug can be considered fraud, and prosecuted (see the second
link below).
I've written a bit about selective reporting of outcomes on my old website:
* www.childrens-mercy.org/stats/weblog2005/SelectiveReporting.asp
* www.childrens-mercy.org/stats/weblog2004/PublicationBias2.asp
and I list a few publications on this topic at my new website:
* www.pmean.com/category/FraudInResearch.html
See several articles by Chan et al, and one by Mathieu et al.
--
Steve Simon, Standard Disclaimer
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