When university and hospital trusts were called to the UK parliament last year to answer questions on why they were not following the rules on reporting results, we saw how effective the questioning from politicians was. Those of you who watched the parliamentary session saw the pressure the university representatives were put under. Because the politicians asked direct questions about specific unreported trials the university representatives were forced to give a detailed explanation for every missing result. They universally told the politicians, ‘we are now planning to report this trial very soon.’ It was an effective way to focus minds.
This is important to do because academic clinical trial researchers are falling behind companies in reporting results. Research and the data from our clinical trial tracking tools are now routinely showing that the majority of company-sponsored clinical trials are complying with reporting laws and rules but the majority of academic institute-sponsored trials are not.
The politicians were armed with information from the EU TrialsTracker website. Everyone can find and use information from there too. AllTrials has put together a set of instructions for using the EUTrialsTracker to identify the clinical trials an institution is responsible for and suggestions for what you should write on the AllTrials website at https://www.alltrials.net/ask-your-institution/
We think that putting rule breakers under this kind of scrutiny will get missing results reported. Can you ask an institute for their plan to report results? Maybe you’re a staff member or alumnus; or perhaps you volunteered for a clinical trial run by a university or hospital. Let us know who you contact and if you get a response, and we will monitor the impact. We can’t wait to hear how you get on. You can reach us on Twitter using #AllTrials or email at alltrials@senseaboutscience.org
The instructions are here https://www.alltrials.net/ask-your-institution/