Tested, and found wanting

HALF of clinical trials do not have their results published. Those behind the TrialsTracker, a web tool created by the Evidence-Based Medicine Data Lab, at Oxford University, hope to change this. Using clinicaltrials.gov, an American database that covers 193 countries, Ben Goldacre and Anna Powell-Smith can track automatically whether results have been put into the public domain. Proportionally, the worst culprits are government and academia. In absolute terms, the biggest offenders are two drug giants, Sanofi and Novartis, and the National Cancer Institute, an American government body. Companies that do well include Shire, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Eli Lilly.

Source: Economist