How transparent is GSK’s stance on clinical trial data? « STweM

"In an article in the ‘Explore GSK’ section under the ‘Data transparency’ tab in depths of the serpentine labyrinth that is GSK’s corporate website, the company’s Chief Medical Officer James Shannon writes: 'In addition to posting information to the register, we have also committed to seek publication of the results of all our clinical research on our medicines in peer-reviewed scientific journals.'  Much as I am sure that all interested parties will welcome this, I suspect that they would also have appreciated some insight into whether ‘seeking publication’ means ‘continuing to seek publication of results of our clinical research until they are accepted, or else self-publishing them’. As Anne Marie Cunningham reminded me [link pending], observers would also like to know whether this year’s, last year’s, and indeed all other available archival clinical trial data from preceding decades will also be made available. They may also wonder not unreasonably wonder why GSK doesn’t cut out the middleman by going down the green open access route and self-archiving everything themselves anyway, then perhaps linking to the data from an entry on the clinical trial on Wikipedia. Would that be breaking anyone’s rules? If so, should an open discussion be had around the issue in order to ascertain whether any obstacles so identified could be overcome? Discoverability (as well as access) remains a concern: GSK.com’s global traffic rank on Alexa was 45,147 at the time of writing, which isn’t too shoddy — until you think that Wikipedia’s is currently 6...  'To be sure this information is not misused, which could be detrimental to medical science and patient care…'  Some examples of the sort of detriments being referred to here may have assuaged the uneasy sensation that one’s attention is being diverted at this point (‘Over there!’), but pressing on: '…research requests will need to be submitted with proposals, which will be reviewed for scientific merit by an independent panel of experts. If approved, access to the data will be granted via a secure web site. This will enable researchers to conduct further research.' This is clearly an entirely new definition of ‘data transparency’ of which up until today I have remained unaware that appears to exclude many of the stakeholders who will be most interested. At least the data are not going to be on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of The Leopard’..."