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Professor Carl Heneghan, SPCR Board member, director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine and founder of the All Trials campaign, submitted evidence to support a new report on clinical trials published by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee this week. The report describes the current lack of transparency of many clinical trials as “unacceptable”.

Prof Heneghan told Guardian Science yesterday, "We need to learn about the effective medicines and the ineffective medicines more efficiently. We need to know about all of them...There's an important principle in science, that it's built on replication. If I do an analysis, I must show the data that analysis is based on. In the modern world, we're not going to stand for this lack of transparency."

The report highlights a number of important issues, including changes to consent to facilitate data sharing, recommending that trial registration and publication of summary-level results be made contractual requirements for all publicly-funded trials. The Committee also asked the Government to take steps to facilitate greater sharing of the raw data generated during a trial. Read the full report.

Committee Chair Andrew Miller MP said: “Many of the trials taking place today are unregistered and unpublished, meaning that the information that they generate remains invisible to both the scientific community and the public. This is unacceptable, undermining public trust, slowing the pace of medical advancement and potentially putting patients at risk."