A Glimpse into “Bad Science”

 by Annika Bright

Despite published research papers being a widely-accepted aspect of science, specifically within medicine, science currently faces an ethical dilemma - research misconduct. Fundamentally, withholding the results of clinical trials from both health professionals and patients (which would otherwise provide an insight into the efficacy, toxicity and to decide on an appropriate dosage if effective), poses great risk to patient safety. These biased results may mislead doctors to prescribe a specific drug, whilst the results inferred, only account for a fraction of the data. Ultimately, this results in the possibility of a patient being exposed to severe side effects in addition to being deprived of a more effective drug. 

An example of this can be viewed with Tamiflu, one of the main anti-influenza drugs used in the UK used to prevent influenza-related complications. As a result, the NHS has spent billions of pounds to supply the Tamiflu drug to the population, despite the fact that eight out of the ten manufacturer-funded trials were never published. Ultimately, this resulted in the independent organisation, The Cochrane Group, setting out to access the unpublished results in hope to analyse whether or not Tamiflu could reduce the frequency of hospitalisations due to influenza. The remaining trials were only received four years after their request, in 2013. An analysis into these trials suggested that although Tamiflu slightly reduces the patient recovery times, the ten trials fail to provide enough evidence to prove that the drug also reduces influenza-related complications. 

To conclude, it is indisputable that drug prescription necessitates both parties having access to entire sets of clinical drug trials to make an informed decision about a patient’s course of treatment.