In an environment where pharmaceutical research is expanding far into theoretical territory with genetic studies and patient-targeted therapies with narrow applications, the drive for early success continues to exert heavy pressure on the reporting of clinical trials. Increasingly, the scientific community is coming to realize the invaluable role that negative outcomes play in the understanding of medicine as a whole.
Early in clinical trial research, the choice to publish was initially left in the hands of the researchers and the publishing community who determined what was and was not newsworthy. As a result, trials with negative results were often abandoned without publication of the data collected, often on the presumption that it represented wasted time and resources. Negative data were often viewed as inconsequential and, therefore, “null.”
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