It’s a start. Now go FDA, go do your job.
A New Website Names and Shames Universities and Companies Who Fail to Report Clinical Trials
Every day, the numbers tick upward. It began with $70,000 last Monday. That Wednesday, it was $170,000. Today, it's $624,726. That's how much the United States government could levy in fines against scientists who run clinical trials and recently failed to comply with a law that says they must make their results public, according to an independent team of researchers based in the United Kingdom. But U.S. government agencies have never penalized anyone for breaking that rule, which was intended to make it easier for doctors and regulators to spot when drugs don't work or have dangerous side effects. The U.S. government's inaction is why the U.K. team created their own website intended to shame the universities, pharmaceutical companies, and government institutes that ignore the law.
"Public accountability is a vitally important tool in public policy, and in improving standards. Public accountability is the reason why many states and countries require restaurants to publish their 'hygiene ratings' on the front door," Ben Goldacre, a physician and health-data researcher at the University of Oxford and the website's lead creator, writes in an email. In addition to embarrassing institutions who are late in posting their results to ClinicalTrials.gov as required, Goldacre hopes charities and other groups that fund trials will look at the site—called TrialTracker—and put pressure on the teams they support. Lastly, an open-data advocacy group that Goldacre founded, AllTrials, will be sending the U.S. Food and Drug Administration a weekly list of late reporters. "We also hope our public tool will help encourage the FDA to enforce the law," he writes.
