It's never too late to publish an abandoned trial

It is estimated that half of all trials have never been published which can lead to patients being denied the most effective treatment and being exposed to unnecessary side effects. Furthermore the trial participants have been misinformed since the trial results have not contributed to the care of future patients. However the non-publication of trials is often not due to a deliberate decision to cover up results. Commonly in academia it is due to more understandable reasons such as researchers having busy clinical posts, moving onto other more demanding projects, changing research areas or starting a family. This is called the “file drawer” problem. The examples in this editorial demonstrate that it is possible to go back, even decades later, and make the results available to inform future evidence based medicine. We call on others to look into their “file drawer” for unpublished trials.