These doctors want to fix a huge problem with drug trials. Why isn’t anyone listening?, vox, February 25, 2016.
When studying a drug or device, researchers measure dozens of health outcomes to understand how the new technology works. Before they start a clinical trial, however, they’re supposed to pre-specify which outcomes they really care about on public clinical trials registries… The idea is that researchers won’t later selectively publish the most positive or more favorable outcomes and drop the negative ones.
…In the real world, unfortunately, researchers sometimes cherry-pick results, leaving doctors and patients with a skewed picture of how drugs and devices actually work…
How did NEJM respond when we tried to correct 20 misreported trials?, compare-trials, February 25, 2016.