Can We Depend on Investigators to Identify and Register Randomized Controlled Trials?

Posted by National Health Index Clinical Trial News Tuesday, September 18th, 2012

Plosone.org: 9/11/12

To reduce publication bias, systematic reviewers are advised to search conference abstracts to identify randomized controlled trials (RCTs) conducted in humans and not published in full. We assessed the information provided by authors to aid identification of RCTs for reviews.

Methods

We handsearched the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) meeting abstracts for 2004 to 2009 to identify reports of RCTs. We compared our classification with that of authors (requested by ARVO 2004–2006), and authors’ report of trial registration (required by ARVO 2007–2009). read more