Clinical trial transparency – let’s talk

For research to be truly transparent, it must also be accessible and discoverable. The current route to publish industry-funded research is slow, with limited transparency and restricted access to research outputs. Open Pharma began during a discussion over a pint, as to why no one seemed to be doing anything about this flawed model of publishing for industry. In this talk, we will share information on our progress, current projects, and ambitions to build a more transparent and accessible publishing process for industry-funded research, and will ask you what actions you want to see from us.

Outcome switching in published clinical trials is already known to be extremely common, even in top medical journals, and many previous studies have documented its prevalence. However, the COMPare team went one step further; they wrote to the journals that published each trial found to contain discrepancies and asked them to correct the record on the individual trials to test the ‘self-correcting’ properties of science. The responses to these letters from journal editors and trial authors were unprecedented and shed light on the reasons why this problem persists.

This unique session gives audience members the chance to take control and to question our expert panel, including Professor Trish Greenhalgh of the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, Nick DeVito of the Evidence-Based Medicine DataLab, Wiley’s own Joe Adams and doctoral researcher Georgia Richards.