Open-data contest unearths scientific gems — and controversy : Nature News & Comment

"The Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial (SPRINT) studied 9,361 people who had elevated blood pressure and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease.

The goal was to find out whether there was any benefit — or harm — of choosing a systolic blood-pressure goal lower than 140 mm Hg. About half of the participants received standard therapy pegged to the 140 mm Hg limit; the other half were treated more intensively, with a goal of forcing their blood pressure below 120 mm Hg.

SPRINT, which began enrolling patients in 2010, was halted in August 2015 when an interim analysis showed that patients receiving intensive therapy were 43% less likely to die from cardiovascular causes such as heart attack or stroke than those on the standard regimen. Three months later, SPRINT investigators published their results in the New England Journal of Medicine1.

Although SPRINT’s blood-pressure intervention had been halted, the team continued to collect data until July 2016, and is still validating those data before carrying out final analyses.

The SPRINT investigators expected to have two years after the final data were collected to conduct those analyses, says Wright. Instead, the NIH and the journal made the data available for its competition in November 2016.

Wright worries that hundreds of researchers are now picking through the data while the SPRINT investigators are still busy closing down the trial. 'Others who had nothing to do with the trial are able to publish a lot faster than we are,” he says. 'The return on investment is dramatically reduced for the investigators in SPRINT, no question.'"