Crackdown on unreported trials is good news for researchers

With MPs, funders and regulators on the case, universities’ poor record on transparency is going to have to change, says Till Bruckner.

On 30 October, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee issued its long-expected report on clinical trials transparency. The report notes that even today, around half of all clinical trials in the UK still fail to post their results onto registries.

As official documents go, the report is remarkably candid—the word “disappointed” leaps off the pages again and again. The parliamentarians’ ire may have been heightened by the fact that five years earlier, a similar report from the same committee called for decisive government action, evidently to little effect.