Dr Carl Heneghan, Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, is part of the campaign that is trying to raise awareness of the problems with lack of publication and with-holding of data. The BMJ, Bad Science, Cochrane Library and the James Lind Alliance are calling for researchers and academics to sign public petition that opens today at www.alltrials.net for better access to clinical data.
Thousands of clinical trials have not reported their results; some have not even been registered. Information on what was done and what was found in these trials could be lost forever to doctors and researchers, leading to bad treatment decisions, missed opportunities for good medicine, and trials being repeated unnecessarily on people and animals.