Funders crack down on unpublished clinical trials—but is it enough?

The consequences of failing to report clinical trial results are huge: patients are deprived of lifesaving drugs, vaccines, and medical devices; flawed or harmful remedies ensue; and colossal sums of taxpayers’ and donors’ money are wasted. Yet just five years ago the World Health Organization estimated that some 50% of clinical trials went unreported, “often because the results are negative.”1“The costs of monitoring compliance are negligible, while the potential benefits are vast, especially in speeding up the translation of new discoveries into clinical practice,” says Till Bruckner, founder of TranspariMED, the advocacy group that steered research published this week.2 The new figures show that several of 39 leading corporate, academic, and other funders from around the world have tightened up on discipline, some significantly over the past year. But compliance remains hugely uneven, internationally and within countries.Uneven complianceIn 2017 WHO issued a joint statement giving several recommendations (box 1) for…
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