BMJ 1995;310:1604 (17 June)

Letters

Registers for clinical trials already exist

EDITOR,--In their editorial on misleading meta-analyses, Matthias Egger and George Davey Smith point out that bias is a major cause of error because of the tendency for negative trials to disappear from view.1 They call for registers of clinical trials to be established. The Medical Research Council already runs a register for cancer trials, and the national research and development programme has a project register system, which can do the job for other trials.

Ethics committees should ensure that investigators intend to publish their trial, perhaps requiring all patients to be informed that registration and publication will occur so that they can be reassured that their participation will benefit others. The project register system can then register the trials so that even the smallest negative trial, which is most likely to be the subject of publication bias, will be available to meta-analysis of the future.

Director of research and development . . . [Full text of this article]


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Misleading meta-analysis
Matthias Egger and George Davey Smith
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This article has been cited by other articles:

  • Persaud, R (1996). Misleading meta-analysis. BMJ 312: 125-125 [Full text]  
  • Egger, M., Smith, G. D. (1995). Misleading meta-analysis. BMJ 311: 753c-754 [Full text]  
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