Despite updated standards requiring preregistration of clinical trials aimed at improving transparency, most studies published in the top-5 psychiatry journals from 2009 to 2013 do not meet the new guidelines, according to an analysis published in PloS one.
For the first time researchers have examined whether the 2005 International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) standards, which address selective outcome reporting and bias in the medical literature, are being implemented by researchers and enforced by journals.
The researchers, Amelia Scott, Julia Rucklidge, and Roger Mulder, sought to determine whether clinical trials being published in top psychiatry journals were being correctly preregistered, and whether they had changed their primary outcome measures (POMs) and/or their proposed time frames for treatment effectiveness.
Out of 181 studies requiring prospective trial registration published in the top 5 psychiatry journals between January 2009 and the end of July 2013 only 60 studies (33%) were correctly registered with clear POMs. Of the rest, 21 were unregistered, 17 had unclear primary outcome measures, 61 had been retrospectively registered, 20 had unclear assessment times and 2 had unavailable protocols.
Not all of the correctly registered studies were up to standards, however. Seventeen out of the 60 correctly registered studies showed discrepancies between the POMs in the preregistration and the published article. The researchers determined that 7 studies had altered their measures “to favour statistically significant results.”
Overall, the research revealed that “less than 15% of psychiatry trials were prospectively registered with no changes in POMs.”
The researchers also showed that studies funded by pharmaceutical companies were more likely to be correctly registered with no changes to POMs than private trials.
They conclude: “Most trials were either not prospectively registered, changed POMs or the timeframes at some point after registration or changed participant numbers. Authors, journal editors and reviewers need to further efforts to highlight the value of prospective trial registration.”
For an in-depth description of this study see Julia Rucklidge’s latest contribution to MIA’s Featured Blogs here →
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Scott, A., Rucklidge, J. J., & Mulder, R. T. (2015). Is Mandatory Prospective Trial Registration Working to Prevent Publication of Unregistered Trials and Selective Outcome Reporting? An Observational Study of Five Psychiatry Journals That Mandate Prospective Clinical Trial Registration. PloS one, 10(8), e0133718. (Full Text)
And why is this not surprising????? This is exactly what I expect to happen with trials and studies that are done by psychiatry in order to bolster and shore up the dikes surrounding its guild interests.
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And these are the ones under some level of scrutiny. What happens in the ones that AREN’T registered?
And pretty sleazy of the journals not to make this a requirement before publication. Not surprising, but definitely sleazy.
— Steve
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One important piece of data missing: how many of the correctly registered vs not had positive outcomes?
“The researchers also showed that studies funded by pharmaceutical companies were more likely to be correctly registered with no changes to POMs than private trials.”
that’s actually interesting and to be honest unexpected.
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I agree, but the pharmacutical corporations are likely trying to behave as “good corporate citizens,” while checking out what the non pharmaceutically funded medical community / researchers are able to produce. And they’ve seemingly now discovered there’s very little funding, thus medical research output, which is non-pharmaceutically funded.
This is great for them, they won’t need to comply with these guidelines either in the future. However, allowing the legally psychopathically only minded pharmacutical corporations to solely control all our medical research was, and still is, staggeringly stupid for all of humanity. And is, and will continue to destroy the credability of the entire mainstream medical industry.
Psychiatry’s current crimes against humanity, due in part to misinformation from the greed only inspired pharmaceutical industry, and their fraudulent science are only the tip of the iceberg. Especially, if we continue to allow the current industries, which are legally required to behave as psychopaths for profit, the right to continue to solely control science.
Most people will claim governments should fund scientific research, but the government supported organizations have been doing this. And our governments, too, have been bought out by the pharmacutical money machines.
The bottom line is, we (including all the governments of the world) need to break up the large, oligopolistic industries – the banks, the pharmacutical cartels, the oil cartels, the military industrial complex. Since allowing these large industries to behave in what’s now a known psychopathically legal behavior, will soon destroy all of humanity.
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