How to Get All Trials Reported: Audit, Better Data, and Individual Accountability

Аннотация

In this week’s PLOS Medicine, the World Health Organization (WHO) publishes a landmark position statement, requiring all trials to make their methods and results available [1]. This represents important progress on a long-standing and global structural problem that has a clear,negative impact on patient care. The best currently available evidence shows that the methods and results of clinical trials are routinely withheld from doctors, researchers, and patients [2–5], undermining our best efforts at informed decision making. From this point forward,whenever the methods and results of a trial are withheld, doctors, patients, researchers, campaigners, and health care providers will be able to point at an unambiguous statement fromWHO.