Data Suppression

I'm curious to know what researchers think about data suppression and whether they consider it a human subjects issue, academic ethics issue, or something else.

Howard Brody writes about recent new evidence of pharmaceutical companies practicing data suppression for financial gain. But if pharma can do it, surely an individual investigator could.

Without a doubt, data suppression is difficult to detect from the outside. Big pharma collects data from all of their research sites and analyze, clean, and process data without transparency. To manipulate data is frankly too easy and financially tempting.

As you might imagine, I see this as both a human subjects protections issue and an academic/business ethics issue. Let us not fool ourselves, the University is a business center as much as an educational one.

But before we begin to catch data suppression, we as a research community must agree it is a priority for science and the health care industry, and then we can address who should be responsible for investigation and enforcement.

The ethics of being a drug manufacturer

"Drug trials under pressure" is a strange title from USA Today for an article suggesting pharma is struggling to prove their drugs work.

Drug cos. solution recently, and perhaps since the beginning, is selectively choosing which data to use from their studies conducted in collaboration with universities nationwide. Naturally, drug cos. encourage the use of data which shows benefit from the use of their drugs while concealing/ignoring data showing no effectiveness.

The evidence in the form of a smoking gun for this ethically questionable practice is not out yet. But I foresee Congressional investigations in the next two years and hopefully serious reform in the next five years.

I'm not against drug manufacturing. Indeed, we need better drugs. However, I want to see them developed safely and the data presented openly and with transparency.