Dealing with industry’s influence on clinical evidence

I co-wrote a piece for The Conversation about a new article that was published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, written by Andreas Lundh and other luminaries from the research area. The authors showed that industry sponsored clinical trials more often report positive outcomes and fewer harmful side effects.

The most interesting result from the article was that the biases that make industry funded clinical trials more likely to produce positive results could not be accounted for  using the standard tools that measure bias. This is amazing because it gives us a strong hint that industry is an independent source of heterogeneity in the systematic reviews that include them.

Too bad it’s the 12th of the 12th 2012 and the world is about to end. We won’t have time to sort it out.

(Feature image from AAP Image/Joe Castro via The Conversation – click the link)