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Nature Medicine 14, 1133 (2008)
doi:10.1038/nm1108-1133b

Publication is positively skewed

Genevive Bjorn1

  1. Maui, Hawaii

Positive results of clinical trials for drugs or devices have a higher chance of getting published in the medical literature than negative trials, according to an investigation into the publication status of the trials submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as part of the 90 new drug approval applications approved by the agency between 1998 and 2000. Notably, when the authors of the study split up their analysis by trial type, they found that clinical trial sponsors publish the results from pivotal trials (an industry term that refers to those trials that show whether a drug or device really works) only 76% of the time (PLoS Med., doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0050191; 2008

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