How to get all trials reported: audit, better data, and individual accountability

In this week’s PLOS Medicine, the World Health Organization (WHO) publishes a landmark position statement, requiring all trials to make their methods and results available. This represents important progress on a long-standing and global structural problem that has a clear, negative impact on patient care. The best currently available evidence shows that the methods and results of clinical trials are routinely withheld from doctors, researchers, and patients, undermining our best efforts at informed decision making. From this point forward, whenever the methods and results of a trial are withheld, doctors, patients, researchers, campaigners, and health care providers will be able to point at an unambiguous statement from WHO.