Clinical Trial Data Repressed

A new study finds that important drug safety data are not seeing the light of day.

Written byBob Grant

| 1 min read

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Data from early stage clinical trials are not being widely reported, thus putting patients at risk, according to a handful of new studies in the British Medical Journal. The missing data includes both safety and efficacy findings that go unreported or are published in obscure places. "This is no academic matter, because missing data about harm in trials can harm patients, and incomplete data about benefit can lead to futile costs to health systems," wrote Oxford University researcher Richard Lehman and BMJ editor Elizabeth Loder in an editorial accompanying the studies. "Moreover, researchers or others who deliberately conceal trial results have breached their ethical duty to trial participants."

These deficiencies surface even after the US Food and Drug Administration enacted rules in 2007 to mandate ...

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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