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When it comes to sharing the results of clinical trials, it seems academic medical centres are no more generous than pharmaceutical companies.
"Despite the ethical mandate and expressed values and mission of academic institutions, there is poor performance and noticeable variation in the dissemination of clinical trial results across leading academic medical centres," concluded the authors of a recent study in BMJ.
This comes as no surprise to Dr. Ben Goldacre, an academic and science writer who cofounded the AllTrials campaign, which calls for all clinical trials to be registered and published. In a previous news article in CMAJ, Goldacre referred to the withholding of clinical trial results as research misconduct. And it is well known, he said, that many researchers in both academia and industry fail to share the findings of their work.
"But just because it's familiar, we shouldn't stop caring: this is a widespread cultural failing throughout medicine, and it's letting patients down," Goldacre wrote in an email, adding that change is...