Trials Going Unpublished

In a paper recently published in The Oncologist by Dr. Scott Ramsey and Dr. John Scroggins, they found that an alarming number of clinical trials are not published, especially those relating to cancer studies. Reasons have included that there have not been enough applicants, or the trial was never concluded, as well as trial results came our negative. According to this news report, "Less than 1 in 5 clinical trials were published in peer-reviewed journals", as also stated "when it came to trials sponsored by industry, the rate was even lower: Just 1 in 20 is published." Some of the bigger problems that this article asked were:

"What if some of those unpublished trials shed important new light on existing cancer drugs? Perhaps a trial revealed that a drug caused previously unknown side effects. Or perhaps the drug didn't extend the life of cancer patients."