Registering Clinical Trials—Reply
- Kay Dickersin, PhD
-
Center for Clinical Trials and Evidence-based Healthcare
Brown Medical School
Providence, RI
- Drummond Rennie, MD
-
Deputy Editor, JAMA
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
In Reply: Dr Leviton suggests that medical editors are as much to blame as authors for failure to publish negative or null results; however, as we pointed out, research has repeatedly shown that this widespread belief is false.1-4 Contrary to Leviton's assertion, we explained that registering a trial with the name, investigators, and other characteristics in fact guarantees that it cannot "disappear." The inclusion of study findings in such a register would be inappropriate, given that by its nature a register has no mechanism to review accuracy, quality, and other important factors in judging validity and reliability of results.
Drs Della Cioppa and Garaud from Novartis report that their company has a publication policy that is in line with the PhRMA Principles of Conduct on Clinical Trials and Communication of Trial Results.5 As we noted in our article, these principles specifically state that they do not …
