#5 Restoring invisible and abandoned trials – Peter Doshi

Send a text message to the show!Clinical trials are the “gold standard” of evidence-based medicine – the best way we have to test whether a drug is safe and effective before it enters the market. But if trial data is poorly reported or – even worse – left unpublished, how are we supposed to determine the true value of a medical treatment? Peter Doshi from the RIAT Support Center has made it his mission to fix the problem and improve data transparency for good.Tune in to find out:How publication and reporting biases affect our understanding of trial resultsHow an investigation into anti-influenza drugs helped galvanise a general movement towards greater data transparency How the RIAT Support Center is facilitating the correction of the scientific recordWant to know more?The Restoring Invisible & Abandoned Trials (RIAT) Support Center offers free support to researchers anywhere in the world that would like to publish an unpublished trial or correct a misreported trial.The AllTrials campaign calls for all past and present clinical trials to be registered and their results reported.The Tamiflu campaign highlighted important discrepancies between journal publications and the underlying clinical study reports, and increased awareness of the importance of independent access to underlying trial data.A 2016 systematic review found that much of the information on adverse events remains unpublished and that the number and range of adverse events is higher in unpublished than in published versions of the same study. Authors from the European Medicines Agency debate whether clinical trial publications are a sufficient basis for healthcare decisions.Peter Doshi and David Healy argue that doctors should not recommend COVID-19 treatments and vaccines when full data are not publicly available.Got a story to share?We’re always looking for new topics and interesting voices. If you have an idea or any other feedback for the show, get in touch!About UMCUppsala Monitoring Centre promotes safer use of medicines and vaccines for everyone everywhere. Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, X, and Bluesky.