Transparency is a major theme in this week’s BMJ. It’s explicit in Rosalind Smyth’s editorial on making information about clinical trials publicly available (doi:10.1136/bmj.b2473). She explains how trial registration in Europe has come through an unusual route, through regulations on testing drugs for use in children. These require all trials of paediatric drugs conducted in Europe to be made publicly available on the EudraCT database. There seemed no logic to insisting on information on trials in children but not in adults, so now the database will include protocols of all trials, with a requirement for results to be available too.

Perhaps surprisingly, …