ince 2008, most research labs have been legally required to publish the results of their clinical trials to a federal database.
Drug companies and other organizations have long opposed disclosure requirements as anti-competitive, but by delivering results so consistently late, labs are exposing themselves to serious fines from the National Institutes of Health. So far, the NIH has declined to enforce those fines, giving researchers free rein to ignore the disclosure requirements.
Earlier this year, the World Health Organization called for more aggressive enforcement of the rule, presenting full disclosure as an easy and cheap way to address many of the problems facing modern medicine. "and we have tolerated this simple, fixable, pervasive flaw in evidence-based medicine for many decades.