Patients are urged to boycott trials that do not guarantee publication

Campaigners for the publication of the results of all clinical trials have launched a public petition to increase pressure on researchers, funding bodies, and institutions to take action.

They are also urging people who are thinking of taking part in a clinical trial to agree to participate only in those trials that have been registered and that promise to publish the results in full.

The initiative (alltrials.net) is backed by the charity Sense About Science, the BMJ, the Cochrane Collaboration, the James Lind Alliance (an alliance of patients and clinicians set up to identify priorities for research), Bad Science author Ben Goldacre, and the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Bond University, Queensland.

Tracey Brown, director of Sense …