The following announcement appears on the WHO Reporting of Findings of Clinical Trials website:
"When researchers embark on a clinical trial, they make a commitment to conduct the trial and to report the findings in accordance with basic ethical principles. This includes preserving the accuracy of the results and making both positive and negative results publicly available. However, a significant proportion of healthcare research remains unpublished and, even when it is published, some researchers do not make all of their results available. Selective reporting, regardless of the reason for it, leads to an incomplete and potentially biased view of the trial and its results. For more information please refer to "Reporting the Findings of Clinical Trials" in The Bulletin.
The WHO Registry Platform Working Group on the Reporting of Findings of Clinical Trials have proposed that "the findings of all clinical trials must be made publicly available". Please complete our online survey and give us feedback on this proposed position."
The survey is available at http://www.who.int/ictrp/results/survey/en/index.html and will be open until midnight (Geneva time) on Friday June 27, 2008.