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Unregistered Trials

Sep 08, 2009

In the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers report that most clinical trials are not properly registered. The researchers searched PubMed for recent clinical trials published in medical journals and high-impact specialty journals. Of those 323 trials, 45.5 percent were "adequately registered", meaning that they were "registered before the end of the trial, with the primary outcome clearly specified." Furthermore, the researchers found that, of those adequately registered trials, 31 percent showed discrepancies between the outcomes registered and the outcomes published. "We're asking people to tell readers honestly and transparently, 'What did you do, and what did you find?'" says paper author David Moher, from the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute in Canada in the New York Times.

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