A review by the US Office of Inspector General found that only about half of the scientists running clinical trials funded by the NIH in 2019 and 2020 appropriately recorded their findings in a federal database, as is legally required.
The US National Institutes of Health failed to ensure the timely reporting of results in roughly half of the clinical trials it funded in 2019 and 2020, including many overseen by NIH scientists, according to the findings of a new report released by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General. In some cases, the agency allowed researchers who failed to meet these federal reporting requirements to launch new trials as well, drawing intense criticism from research transparency advocates and at least one former director of ClinicalTrials.gov, the federal database in which scientists are legally required to post updates on clinical research.We are led to believe that the laws and regulations in the US means that their clinical trials in clinical research are some of the safest in the world. They have had on the books for sometime that the results of clinical trials must be published. We have heard many times how inefficient and dangerous it is if the results are not published. So, it is sickening to hear that the US governance arrangements in this regard are not being enforced. It is frankly disgusting to hear that the peak health research body in the States is failing in this way. We have included links to 17 related items.
In 2018, the US Office of Inspector General (OIG) conducted a small probe to determine whether the NIH—which funds much of the clinical work conducted in the US—was sufficiently enforcing federal regulations that require researchers to publish their results within one year of an estimated or actual completion date. In a brief statementdescribing its justification for the new report, the OIG stated that “our preliminary review of data from ClinicalTrials.gov showed that most NIH-funded clinical trials that were completed in calendar year 2018 did not have their results posted.” The findings were troubling enough that the office began a more substantive analysis of trials carried out in 2019 and 2020.
