How publication bias damages progress

The publication of negative results is important to ensure that clinicians have as much information as possible when deciding on whether to use a particular intervention.

More long-term, the publication of all relevant data, even from small studies, is important for meta-analysis, where all studies on a particular intervention are pulled together to find an overall conclusion.

In an article published in the European Journal of Palliative Care, authors Currow and Abernethy explore how this bias affects developments in palliative care. They highlight how hospice and palliative care researchers have a poor track record for publishing in searchable, peer-reviewed literature, and how palliative care trials are often small and underpowered and so less likely to be published.

Registering all trials

One answer, which Currow and Abernethy discuss, is to ensure that all trials are publicly registered. This way, researchers would be aware of other trials already under way, and any results which have not been published in the peer-reviewed literature. The results would also be more easily found and used for meta-analysis. 

Initiatives have been introduced to try and encourage the the registration of all trials (and websites exist for registering clinical trials) but there are still many that are not registered.

Recently, a campaign was launched to encourage governments, regulators and research bodies to implement measures to ensure that all clinical trial results are reported. All Trials Registered, All Results Reported is an initiative of the BMJ, the Centre for Evidence-based Medicine, Sense About Science, James Lind Initiative, Ben Goldacre (author of ‘Bad Pharma: How drug companies mislead doctors and harm patients’), and others from research, patient groups and medicine.

For more information on publication bias in palliative care, you can find the article ‘The importance of publishing studies with negative results in palliative care‘ by Currow and Abernethy, in volume 19, issue 4 of the European Journal of Palliative Care.