My latest Forbes piece is now out: “The Positive Value of Negative Drug Trials“.

I discuss the unfortunate bias against publishing “negative” scientific results that show a drug doesn’t have much clinical benefit, and why it’s in the self-interest of drug companies to still report these.

In particular, I highlighted two interesting facts:

1) Most drug trial results are still not being reported to a central registry.

2) Negative results funded by private industry (e.g., pharmaceutical companies) are more likely to be reported than from government-funded research.

Fortunately, free market incentives are driving more drug companies towards full disclosure of both positive and negative study results — which will benefit patients.

For more details, read the full text of “The Positive Value of Negative Drug Trials“.

  • James

    I have always wanted to start a journal specifically for negative results. They are under-reported in all areas of science, because our culture only wants to hear about success. The result in medicine is a distorted view of the quality of certain drugs; in other areas it results in tremendous duplication of effort, as failed techniques aren’t widely known. It would save tremendous amounts of time, effort, and resources to have this information more widely distributed.

   
Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha