#5 Restoring invisible and abandoned trials – Peter Doshi Artwork

Drug Safety Matters

Drug Safety Matters brings you the best stories from the world of pharmacovigilance. Through in-depth interviews with our guests, we cover new research and trends, and explore the most pressing issues in medicines safety today. Produced by Uppsala Monitoring Centre, the WHO Collaborating Centre for International Drug Monitoring.

The views and opinions expressed in the podcast are those of the hosts and guests respectively and, unless otherwise stated, do not represent the position of any institution to which they are affiliated.

All Episodes

Drug Safety Matters

#5 Restoring invisible and abandoned trials – Peter Doshi

September 30, 2020 • Uppsala Monitoring Centre

0:00 | 34:27

Send a text message to the show!

Clinical trials are the “gold standard” of evidence-based medicine – the best way we have to test whether a drug is safe and effective before it enters the market. But if trial data is poorly reported or – even worse – left unpublished, how are we supposed to determine the true value of a medical treatment? Peter Doshi from the RIAT Support Center has made it his mission to fix the problem and improve data transparency for good.

Tune in to find out:

How publication and reporting biases affect our understanding of trial results
How an investigation into anti-influenza drugs helped galvanise a general movement towards greater data transparency
How the RIAT Support Center is facilitating the correction of the scientific record

Want to know more?

The Restoring Invisible & Abandoned Trials (RIAT) Support Center offers free support to researchers anywhere in the world that would like to publish an unpublished trial or correct a misreported trial.

The AllTrials campaign calls for all past and present clinical trials to be registered and their results reported.

The Tamiflu campaign highlighted important discrepancies between journal publications and the underlying clinical study reports, and increased awareness of the importance of independent access to underlying trial data.

A 2016 systematic review found that much of the information on adverse events remains unpublished and that the number and range of adverse events is higher in unpublished than in published versions of the same study.

Authors from the European Medicines Agency debate whether clinical trial publications are a sufficient basis for healthcare decisions.

Peter Doshi and David Healy argue that doctors should not recommend COVID-19 treatments and vaccines when full data are not publicly available.

Got a story to share?
We’re always looking for new topics and interesting voices. If you have an idea or any other feedback for the show, get in touch!

About UMC
Uppsala Monitoring Centre promotes safer use of medicines and vaccines for everyone everywhere. Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, X, and Bluesky.