Opinion | Joe Biden Made a Promise to Scientists. He Can Still Keep It. - The New York Times

peter.suber's bookmarks 2021-04-10

Summary:

"Researchers who receive federal help consistently fail to report their results to the public. The government should hold them accountable....

Researchers using federal funds to conduct cancer trials — experiments involving drugs or medical devices that rely on volunteer subjects — were sometimes taking more than a year to report their results to the N.I.H., as required. “If you don’t report, the law says you shouldn’t get any funding,” he said, citing an investigation I had published in Stat with my colleague Talia Bronshtein. “Doc, I’m going to find out if it’s true, and if it’s true, I’m going to cut funding. That’s a promise.”

It was true then. It’s true now. More than 150 trials completed since 2017 by the N.I.H’s National Cancer Institute, which leads the $1.8 billion Moonshot effort, should have reported results by now. About two-thirds reported after their deadlines or not at all, according to a University of Oxford website that tracks clinical trials regulated by the Food and Drug Administration and National Institutes of Health. Some trial results are nearly two years overdue. Over all, government-sponsored scientists have complied less than half the time for trial results due since 2018. (A spokeswoman for the N.I.H. said, “We are willing to do all measures to ensure compliance with ClinicalTrials.gov results reporting.”)...

In 2016, Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, announced that the agency would begin penalizing researchers for failing to comply with its reporting requirements. “We are serious about this,” he said at the time. Yet in the years since, neither the F.D.A. nor N.I.H. has enforced the law. ..."

Link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/08/opinion/biden-promise-scientists.html

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Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » peter.suber's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.new oa.biden oa.usa oa.funders.public oa.policies oa.policies.funders oa.usa.nih oa.medicine oa.usa.fda oa.clinical_trials oa.data oa.negative oa.compliance oa.industry oa.funders oa.pharma

Date tagged:

04/10/2021, 09:42

Date published:

04/10/2021, 05:42