When I heard a lecture on this subject (there is pretty damning statistical evidence that drug trials are always slanted towards the company paying for the trials) the only viable proposal I heard discussed was to have the testing completely performed and controlled by an unbiased third party. (probably the government)
It’s not necessary to have them completely performed and controlled by a third party—but the idea is if you want to do a drug trial, you sign up with an independent register saying which drug you’re testing and what your methodology is. Then when the trial is done, you must report your results publicly.
That stops companies hiding negative trials and only publishing positive ones. It doesn’t stop the data being manipulated, but that’s another problem.
How would registry of the trials work?
When I heard a lecture on this subject (there is pretty damning statistical evidence that drug trials are always slanted towards the company paying for the trials) the only viable proposal I heard discussed was to have the testing completely performed and controlled by an unbiased third party. (probably the government)
It’s not necessary to have them completely performed and controlled by a third party—but the idea is if you want to do a drug trial, you sign up with an independent register saying which drug you’re testing and what your methodology is. Then when the trial is done, you must report your results publicly.
That stops companies hiding negative trials and only publishing positive ones. It doesn’t stop the data being manipulated, but that’s another problem.